de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
Image credit:
Getty Images/Erin McCarthy
A man whose wit was matched only by the looseness of his tongue, the
combative John Adams quickly acquired a hefty reputation for articulate jabs
and razor-sharp put-downs at the expense of his allies and (numerous) rivals
alike, including some of the most celebrated figures in American history (Bob
Dole once described him as “an eighteenth-century Don Rickles”). Here are some
of his best zingers.
1. On Benjamin Franklin
“His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to
decency.”
2. On Alexander Hamilton
“That bastard brat of a Scottish peddler! His ambition, his restlessness and
all his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of
secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb!”
(Hamilton certainly wasn't above
returning the fire.)
3. On Thomas Paine's Common Sense
“What a poor, ignorant, malicious, crapulous mass.”
(For more on their relationship, head
here.)
4. On George Washington
“That Washington is not a scholar is certain. That he is too illiterate,
unlearned, unread for his station is equally beyond dispute.”
5. On the City of Philadelphia
“Phyladelphia [sic], with all its trade and wealth and regularity, is not
Boston. The morals of our people are much better; their manners are more polite
and agreeable... Our language is better, our taste is better, our persons are
handsomer; our spirit is greater, our laws are wiser, our religion is better,
our education is better. We exceed them in every thing, but in a market.”
6. On Thomas Jefferson
“His soul is poisoned with ambition.”
7. On John Dickinson
While working as a member of the American
revolution's continental congress, Adams referred to one of his less-radical
colleagues as “a piddling genius” in one of his letters—an insult which caused
a good deal of uproar when the British intercepted and published the candid
document
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