Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
259
AUTHOR:
John Adams (1735–1826)
QUOTATION:
The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
ATTRIBUTION:
JOHN ADAMS, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol. 1 (vol. 4 of The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams), Preface, p. 290 (1851). First published in 1787.
