By examining only fragments of Josiah Quincy's life, historians may have obscured the reasons for his change of thought in the years 1767-75, from a position of strong opposition to British policy to one of acceptance of the necessity for total separation from Great Britain. Quincy's activities during these years reveal not a gradual process of orderly transformation but, rather, a series of waverings between restraint and radicalism - a pattern which may have had implications for his contemporaries. Four significant factors in Qunicy's erratic career are as follows: 1) an uneasiness about mobs seemed to influence his "moderate" tendencies; 2) a reluctance to view bloodshed as the only means to liberty restained his radicalism; 3) his distrust of Thomas Hutchinson, as the source of all evil as far as the colonists were concerned, was an important moderating influence; and 4) Quincy's own impressionable personality was the major reason for his political vacillations. It is possible that somewhat similar causes and motives influenced some of Quincy's contemporaries. In the years 1765-75 he was acting out an erratic although progressive estrangement from Great Britain - a painful transformation being experienced by thousands of others and thereby producing the American Revolution. Based on printed material; 56 notes.