I will let the readers decide. It's also not the only one Adams has given like this (he actually has many). But this one well captures his sentiment. To Thomas Jefferson, July 9th 1813:
... No sooner has one Party discovered or invented an Amelioration of the Condition of Man or the order of Society, than the opposite Party, belies it, misconstrues it, misrepresents it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated or interpolated, or prohibited Sometimes by Popes, Sometimes by Emperors, Sometimes by Aristocratical and Sometimes by democratical Assemblies and Sometimes by Mobs.
Aristotle wrote the History and description of Eighteen hundred Republicks, which existed before his time. Cicero wrote two Volumes of discoures on Government, which perhaps were worth all the rest of his Works. The Works of Livy and Tacitus & that are lost, would be more interesting than all that remain. Fifty Gospells have been destroyed, and where are St. Lukes World of Books that had been written? If you ask my Opinion, who has committed all the havoc? I will answer you candidly; Ecclesiastical and Imperial Despotism has done it, to conceal their Frauds.Why are the Histories of all Nations, more ancient than the Chrtian Æra, lost? Who destroyed the Alexandrian Library? I believe that Christian Priests, Jewish Rabbis Grecian Sages and Roman Emperors had as great a hand in it as Turks and Mahomitans.
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Catlicks, Joos and why not, the Romans. I told you Adams was a ninny. His post-presidential musings are dilettantish when they're not outright absurd.
"Ecclesiastical and Imperial Despotism has done it, to conceal their Frauds.
"Why are the Histories of all Nations, more ancient than the Chrtian Æra, lost? Who destroyed the Alexandrian Library? I believe that Christian Priests, Jewish Rabbis Grecian Sages and Roman Emperors had as great a hand in it as Turks and Mahomitans."
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