Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by John Adams

Quote by John Adams

Work

Familiar Letters of John Adams & His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

John Adams
John Adams

John Adams, the second President of the United States, was a statesman, diplomat, and writer. Born on October 30, 1735, and died on July 4, 1826, Adams played a significant role in the American Revolutionary War. He was one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and served as the President from 1789 to 1797. more

You May Also Like

“Failure to recognize one's own absolute significance is equivalent to a denial of human worth; this is a basic error and the origin of all unbelief. If one is so faint-hearted that he is powerless even to believe in himself, how can he believe in anything else? The basic falsehood and evil of egoism lie not in this absolute self-consciousness and self-evaluation of the subject, but in the fact that, ascribing to himself in all justice an absolute significance, he unjustly refuses to others this same significance. Recognizing himself as a centre of life (which as a matter of fact he is), he relegates others to the circumference of his own being and leaves them only an external and relative value.”

EvilEgoismSelf CenterednessHuman ValueHuman Worth
Book:The Meaning of Love
Create image

“Why settle for a lesser vision? When you are destiny for greatness!”

Inspirational QuotesLife QuotesMotivational QuotesFateChristian LifeBelieve In YourselfDaily LifeYouDreams QuotesDestiny QuotesFighting SpiritGreatness QuotesDaily QuotesYour LifeThoughts On LifePurpose QuotesGod S GraceUplifting QuotesYour JourneyLive Your Best LifeSelf Esteem QuotesGoals QuotesCalling PeopleBelieve And AchieveSelf Realization QuotesPursuit Of KnowledgeMindfulness PracticeInspired LifeAdvice QuotesPotential QuotesAmbition QuotesCapabilities QuotesInner Self QuotesVisions QuotesPurse Your DestinyPursuit Of Passions
Book:Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind
Create image

“Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.”

EvilDictatorshipRapeTotalitarianismArgentina1970sBanality Of EvilHannah ArendtJorge Rafael VidelaHitch 22
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature. Literature is either the essential or nothing. I believe that the Evil—an acute form of Evil—which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality.' Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication. —Literature and Evil”

EvilLiteratureMoralityBataille
Author:Georges Bataille
Create image