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John Adams Quotes

John Adams Quotes

Enjoy the top 380 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Adams.

“If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence ...”
— John Adams —

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. This is enough.

— John Adams

“I say, that Power must never be trusted without a check.”

— John Adams

“A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.'
(Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.)
[Diary entry, February 13 1756]”

— John Adams

“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

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

— John Adams

“Fear is the foundation of most governments.”

— John Adams

“I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.”

— John Adams

“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

“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

“Genius is sorrow's child.”

— John Adams

“I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.”

— John Adams

“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

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”

— John Adams

“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

“[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

“Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.”

— John Adams

“You and I ought not to die,before we have explained ourselves to each other.”

— John Adams

“I never saw the face of Cobbett ... I should not know him if I met him in my porridge dish.”

— John Adams

“But I am bold to say there is not a fact nor a reason stated in it, which had not been frequently urged in Congress. The temper and wishes of the people supplied every thing at that time; and the phrases, suitable for an emigrant from Newgate, or one who had chiefly associated with such company, such as, "The Royal Brute of England," "The blood upon his soul," and a few others of equal delicacy, had as much weight with the people as his arguments.”

— John Adams

Liberty once lost, is lost forever.

— John Adams

Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.

— John Adams

I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.

— John Adams

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence.

— John Adams

“There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.”

— John Adams

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.”

— John Adams

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands: we have a check upon two branches of the legislature, as each branch has upon the other two; the power I mean of electing at stated periods, one branch, which branch has the power of electing another. It becomes necessary to every subject then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for himself of the tendencies of political principles and measures.

— John Adams

“The form of government which you admire, when its principles are pure is admirable indeed. It is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted. Such a government is only to be supported by pure religion or Austere morals.”

— John Adams

“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.”

— John Adams

“It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.”

— John Adams

“By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man ... Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocracies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.”

— John Adams

Mr. Adams, describing a conversation with Jonathan Sewall in 1774, says: "I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination."

— John Adams

“Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.”

— John Adams

“I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”

— John Adams

“My history of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed "a step toward darkness," cruelty, perfidy, despotism, death and I wish we were out of danger of bigotry and Jesuitism.”

— John Adams

I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.

— John Adams

“I request that they may be considered in confidence, until the members of Congress are fully possessed of their contents, and shall have had opportunity to deliberate on the consequences of their publication; after which time, I submit them to your wisdom.”

— John Adams

America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.

— John Adams

“It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up, at such a season as the present.”

— John Adams

“The Constitution is ... the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen”

— John Adams

“The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.”

— John Adams

“Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.”

— John Adams

“If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”

— John Adams

“What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine.”