Latest Gordon S. Wood Quotes from Interviews

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• Deeply versed in history, [John Adams] said over and over that America had no special providence, no special role in history, that Americans were no different from other peoples, that the United States was just as susceptible to viciousness and corruption as any other nation. In this regard, at least, Jefferson's vision has clearly won the day.

  Gordon S. Wood

  America, Vision, Special

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• More than any other figure in our history [Tomas] Jefferson is responsible for the idea of American exceptionalism.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Ideas, Responsible, Figures

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• Again and again [Tomas] Jefferson deftly sidesteps many of [John] Adams's often provocative remarks. They both felt the correspondence, which was written for posterity, was too important to risk by being too candid with one another.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Risk, Important, Provocative

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [Tomas] Jefferson believed that the United States was a chosen nation with a special responsibility to spread democracy around the world.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Responsibility, Democracy, Special

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• A mutual friend, Benjamin Rush, brought [Tomas Jefferson and John Adams] together in 1812, and they went on to exchange letters for the rest of their lives. But in their correspondence they tended to avoid the most controversial issues, such as slavery.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Issues, Together, Slavery

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• After [Tomas] Jefferson's defeat of [John] Adams in the presidential election of 1800, they didn't communicate with one another for more than a decade.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Presidential, Election, Defeat

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [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.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Religious, Europe, Differences

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• This rationale, which justified the mixed constitution of Great Britain, might have made some sense in 1776, but by 1787 most American thinkers had come to believe that all parts of their balanced governments represented in one way or another the sovereign people. They had left the Aristotelian idea of mixed estates - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy - way behind. [John] Adams had not, and his stubbornness on this point caused him no end of trouble.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Believe, Government, Ideas

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• The relationship between [John] Adams and [Tomas] Jefferson was extraordinary. They differed on every conceivable issue, except on the Revolution and the love of their country.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Country, Issues, Revolution

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [ Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates - that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people.

  Gordon S. Wood

  People, House, Massachusetts

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• It was [John's Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people.

  Gordon S. Wood

  People, Massachusetts, Constitution

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• I think [John Adams's] influence on the federal Constitution was indirect. Many including James Madison mocked the first volume of Adams's Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787. But his Massachusetts constitution was a model for those who thought about stable popular governments, with its separation of powers, its bicameral legislature, its independent judiciary, and its strong executive.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Strong, Independent, Thinking

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John] Adams identified himself with the political theories of [James] Harrington, [John] Locke, and [Charles-Louis] Montesquieu, whose ideas of constitutionalism, he believed, were applicable to all peoples everywhere; they were his contribution to what he called "the divine science of politics."

  Gordon S. Wood

  Ideas, Political, Divine

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John] Adams was arguing that a separate social order existed that needed to be embodied in senates and his fellow Americans could not accept this and accused him rightly of being obsessed with the English constitution.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Order, Arguing, Constitution

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• 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.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Order, Creating, People

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [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.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Writing, Criticism, United States

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John Adams' writings] had indicted the United States for slavishly copying the English constitution by erecting bicameral legislatures in their state constitutions, most drafted in 1776.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Writing, Copying, United States

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• Americans, [John Adams] wrote in 1780, believed that their "revolution is as much for the benefit of the generality of Mankind in Europe, as for their own."

  Gordon S. Wood

  Europe, Benefits, Revolution

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John] Adams's letters reveal his persistence and determination to win over the Dutch against all odds and to convince them and the other peoples of Europe of the potential greatness of the United States and of the importance of the Revolution to the world.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Determination, Persistence, Winning

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• The Massachusetts constitution was written much later than the other revolutionary state constitutions, and thus it avoids some of the earlier mistakes. The executive is stronger, with a limited veto; the senate is more formidable; and the judiciary is independent.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Mistake, Independent, Stronger

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [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.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Practice, Special, Massachusetts

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• Perhaps more significant than his experience in Europe, though, was [John] Adams's experience in his own country, and his extensive reading on the history of the English constitution. In 1779, he had an opportunity to try out his ideas by framing the Massachusetts constitution.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Country, Reading, Opportunity

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John Adams] experience with the French philosophers only convinced him further of the need for a bicameral legislature representing the two principal social orders and, equally important, an independent executive.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Independent, Order, Two

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• I think [John Adams] developed a much deeper suspicion of France and the other European powers than he had earlier. He lost much if not all of the utopian thinking about international politics and diplomacy expressed in his Model Treaty of 1776 and became much more cynical about the world.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Thinking, Cynical, World

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

• [John] Adams's perception of Europe, and especially France, was clearly different than [Tomas] Jefferson's. For Jefferson, the luxury and sophistication of Europe only made American simplicity and virtue appear dearer. For Adams, by contrast, Europe represented what America was fast becoming - a society consumed by luxury and vice and fundamentally riven by a struggle between rich and poor, gentlemen and commoners.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Struggle, Europe, Luxury

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org