JOHN ADAMS, journal entry, 1770:
Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
I have thought for some time that no group of men were ever assembled who understood both the dangers and the temptations of power better than those who assembled to make this country. Lord Acton may have distilled it into a pithy remark, but these men understood it to their marrow.