John Adams Quotes

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

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better unders...

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

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm a...

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, s...

Swim or sink live or die survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

A government of laws, and not of men

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the gove...

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

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contriv...

If I had refused to institute a negotiation or had not persevered in it I would have been degraded ...

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

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitutio...

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

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

I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in h...

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and divi...

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living...

Every man in it is a great man an orator a critic a statesman and therefore every man upon every...

Had I been chosen president again I am certain I could not have lived another year.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand sce...

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

In esse I am nothing in posse I am everything.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importan...

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

The four most miserable years of my life . . .

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with al...

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I h...

A government of laws, and not of men.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implie...

While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolati...

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each ar...

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was ...

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, sp...

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and cr...

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our ...

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet...

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such ...

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

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in a...

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in a...

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarch...

You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust w...

Daughter! Get you an honest Man for a Husband, and keep him honest. No matter whether he is rich, pr...

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislat...

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

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, i...

Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I h...

Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery i...

I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened...

A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and ...

...The Presidential election has given me less anxiety than I myself could have imagined. The next a...

He wrote as a young man that God's noblest gift was the gift of an inquiring mind.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness o...

There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one...

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

Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I h...

...Defeat appears to me preferable to total Inaction.

We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a coloni...

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps...

Be it remembered, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from...

A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a gre...

Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your pow...

Politeness, delicacy [and] decency ... are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and c...

Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of p...

Knowledge in the head and virtue in the heart, time devoted to study or business, instead of show an...

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:I must judge f...

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

player: Can I reach it with a five iron? caddie: Eventually.