Quote

How is it possible that any man should ever think

“How is it possible that any man should ever think of making it [politics] subservient to his own little passions and mean private interests?…is the end of politics a fortune, a family, a gilded coach, a train of horses, and a troop of livery servants, balls at Court, splendid dinners and suppers? Yet the divine science of politics is at length in Europe reduced to a mechanical system composed of these materials.”

(John Adams, Letter to James Warren The American Enlightenment, p. 189. June 17, 1782.)