Thunderknuckles
04-19-2012, 10:32 AM
I came across this quote from John Adams. It blew me away as it indeed seems to be a prophetic message that is coming to pass in this country today. I had to share.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the
liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press
upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the
American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats
faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more
revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more
corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue,
integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and
vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. "
-- John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the
liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press
upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the
American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats
faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more
revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more
corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue,
integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and
vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. "
-- John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774