John Adams famous quotes

A government of laws, and not of men.
-- John Adams

#Men #Law #Presidential

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
-- John Adams

#Suicide #Freedom #Suicidal

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
-- John Adams

#Government #Forever #Presidential

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-- John Adams

#Inspirational #Freedom #War

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
-- John Adams

#Education #Philosophy #War

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
-- John Adams

#Leadership #Character #Power

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
-- John Adams

#Bible #God #Religious

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Children #Patriotic

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
-- John Adams

#Children #Ambition #Compassion

And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
-- John Adams

#Education #Character #Mean

The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
-- John Adams

#People #Handwriting

If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle
-- John Adams

#Believe #Men #Tails

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
-- John Adams

#Patriotic #Passion #Law

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
-- John Adams

#Motivational #Horse #Exercise

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
-- John Adams

#Christian #Atheist #Government

[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Father #Blood

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
-- John Adams

#Trust #Mean #Thinking

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
-- John Adams

#Education #Mind #Superstitions

In politics the middle way is none at all.
-- John Adams

#Success #Law #Nerd

Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-- John Adams

#Fear #Patriotic #Government

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
-- John Adams

#Country #Two #Debt

You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
-- John Adams

#Education #Inspirational Life #Men

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.
-- John Adams

#Volunteer #Virtue #Be Good

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (12 May 1780)
-- John Adams

#Children #War #Philosophy

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.
-- John Adams

#Mankind #Possession #Curse

Power must never be trusted without a check.
-- John Adams

#Power #Checks #Trusted

...Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrendered their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.
-- John Adams

#Cities #Government #People

The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly [with your God]. This is enough.
-- John Adams

#Thinking #Mercy #Enough

The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
-- John Adams

#Patriotic #Government #Hands

Always stand on principle....even if you stand alone.
-- John Adams

#Principles #Politics #Stand Alone

I read my eyes out and can't read half enough...the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
-- John Adams

#Inspiring #Education #Book

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
-- John Adams

#Life And Love #Poetry #Liberty

We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.
-- John Adams

#Ignorance #Heart #Greatness

Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
-- John Adams

#Fall #Bad Ass #Justice

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
-- John Adams

#Atheist #Believe #Fate

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
-- John Adams

#Strength #Peace #Tyrants

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
-- John Adams

#Peace #War #History

The happiness of society is the end of government.
-- John Adams

#Happiness #Government #Presidential

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
-- John Adams

#Inspiring #Education #Book

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
-- John Adams

#Country #Men #History

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
-- John Adams

#Party #Government #Political

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
-- John Adams

#Education #Freedom #Knowledge

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.
-- John Adams

#Political #Independence #Glory

As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
-- John Adams

#Love #Children #Hero

I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
-- John Adams

#Children #Fate #Giving

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
-- John Adams

#Law #Support #Fundamentals

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
-- John Adams

#Essence #World #Awful

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
-- John Adams

#Real #Liberty #Mankind

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Writing #Thinking

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.
-- John Adams

#Suffering #Source #Dissertation

But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the Faith may be, I firmly believe.
-- John Adams

#Religious #Believe #May

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
-- John Adams

#Religious #Revenge #Ambition

Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
-- John Adams

#Names #Hypocrisy #Suffering

I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
-- John Adams

#Education #Wisdom #Reading

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Power #Self

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
-- John Adams

#Peace #War #Thinking

Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
-- John Adams

#Inspirational #Motivational #Suicide

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
-- John Adams

#Religious #Insightful #Liberty

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
-- John Adams

#Eye #Simple #Imagination

I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.
-- John Adams

#Events #Determined #Virtue

Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
-- John Adams

#Passion #Whales #Morality

When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one.
-- John Adams

#Moving #Hands #Chess

Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.
-- John Adams

#Assuming #Never Assume #Increase

But all provisions that He (God) has made for the gratification of our senses…are much inferior to the provision, the wonderful provision that He has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason. He has given us reason to find out the truth, and the real design and true end of our existence.
-- John Adams

#Real #Design #Wonderful

They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.
-- John Adams

#Acknowledge #Expected

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
-- John Adams

#Law #Ideas #Evil

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
-- John Adams

#Patriotic #Heart #Men

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Patriotic #History

The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.
-- John Adams

#Drama #Tragedy #World

We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
-- John Adams

#Virtue #Parliament #Humankind

Everything in life should be done with reflection.
-- John Adams

#Reflection #Done #Should

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
-- John Adams

#Government #Years #Political

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
-- John Adams

#Money #Nature #Patriotic

The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
-- John Adams

#Foundation #Morality

Ideology is the science of idiots.
-- John Adams

#Idiot #Ideology

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.
-- John Adams

#Men #Office #Presidential

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
-- John Adams

#4th Of July #Patriotic #America

You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!
-- John Adams

#Player #Bishops #May

Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
-- John Adams

#Conversation #Persons #Subjects

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.
-- John Adams

#Education #Wise #Learning

There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
-- John Adams

#Heart #Branches #Kind

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
-- John Adams

#Freedom #Laughter #Writing

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
-- John Adams

#Government #Essence #Political

I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.
-- John Adams

#Wish

There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.
-- John Adams

#War #Guilt

Thanks to God that he gave me stubborness when I know I am right.
-- John Adams

#Thanks

Genius is sorrow's child.
-- John Adams

#Children #Sorrow #Genius

When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.
-- John Adams

#People #Undone #Legislature