John Adams Quote

The proposition, that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties, is not true; they are the worst conceivable; they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

This is attributed to Adams in The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858) by Henry Stephens Randall, p. 587 - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)