GORDON S. WOOD

…an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind…

Original intent is a necessary fiction that jurists have invented to get a handle on the Constitution.

History written today is much more accurate than history written in the 18th century.

Every generation lives with illusions.

Liberty was realized when the citizens were ... willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community

The Battle of Yorktown effectively ending the American Revolution was really a French military victory.

In every colonial punishment the authorities were determined to expose the offender to scorn … persons with a brand on their forehead or a piece of ear missing were forever exposed to the contempt of their fellows

Jefferson, Madison and Washington could not survive in today’s political environment.

One class did not overthrow another; the poor did not supplant the rich. But social relationships—the way people were connected one to another—were changed and decisively so.

It is not suffrage that gives life to democracy; it is our democratic society that gives life to suffrage.

Americans invented not simply a new form of government but an entirely new concept of politics.

If the study of history teaches anything, it teaches us the limitations of life.

History should teach humility and prudence, but America doesn’t seem to learn. I’ve never seen a virgin who loses her innocence more often.

The American Revolution produced two new countries—The United States and Canada

History is an accumulative science, gradually gathering truth through the steady and plodding efforts of countless practitioners turning out countless monographs

[John Adams] diary, of course, is even more revealing of his feelings. Both his letters to [his wife] Abigail and his diary tell us what he really thinks about people and events.

By 1782 [John Adams] had come to feel for [Benjamin] Franklin "no other sentiments than Contempt or Abhorrence."

[John] Adams said his objective in writing his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States and his Davila essays was to counter what he thought was the unfair criticism of the American state constitutions made by the French philosophers, especially [Anne Robert Jacques] Turgot.

Creating senates, the French critics said, implied that there was another social order besides the people represented in the houses of representatives. [John] Adams actually agreed with that implication and argued that the aristocracy and the people had to have separate houses; this was the only way the power of the aristocracy could be contained.

[John Adams and Tomas Jefferson] shared experience in 1775 - 1776 in bringing about the separation from Britain and their service in Europe cemented a friendship that in the end withstood the most serious political and religious differences that one could imagine, especially their differences over the French Revolution. It was probably Jefferson's obsession with politeness and civility that kept the relationship from becoming irreparably broken.

As early as 1776, [John Adams] expressed his doubts about America's capacity for virtue. "I have seen all along my Life, Such Selfishness, and Littleness even in New England, that I sometimes tremble to think that, altho We are engaged in the best Cause that ever employed the Human Heart, yet the Prospect of success is doubtfull not for Want of Power or of Wisdom, but of Virtue."

[John] Adams was the best and most colorful stylist among the Founders. Although [Tomas] Jefferson is widely regarded as the smoothest writer, Adams is by far the most engaging and imaginative.

[John] Adams never had an optimistic view of human nature, and his experience in the Congress and abroad only deepened his suspicion that his fellow Americans might not have the character to sustain a republican government.

[Benjamin] Franklin may be a great philosopher, [John Adams] told his diary in 1779, but "as a Legislator in America he has done very little."

[The Massachusetts constitution] resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification - practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers.