John Adams Quotes

Quotes about:

• One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.

  John Adams

  Men, Law, Two

  160 Copy quote
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  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

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.229

  355 Copy quote

• Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.

  John Adams

  Principles, Politics, Stand Alone

  "Who is Bernie Sanders?" by Tom Pappalardo, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 28, 2015.

  229 Copy quote

• 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

  271 Copy quote

• There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.

  John Adams

  Party, Humble, Government

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.511

  273 Copy quote

• Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

  John Adams

  Men, Class, Safety

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.97, Hackett Publishing

  230 Copy quote
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  But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

  John Adams

  Government, Presidential, Forever

  John Adams (2012). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.76, Simon and Schuster

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

  John Adams

  Peace, War, Thinking

  John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson (1959). “The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. 1812-1826”

  172 Copy quote

• The destiny of America is to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.

  John Adams

  Bible, Jesus, Destiny

  42 Copy quote
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  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

  Letter from John Adams to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

  279 Copy quote

• Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

  John Adams

  Liberty, Libertarian, Pro Gun

  47 Copy quote

• When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.

  John Adams

  Hands, Political, Citizens

  69 Copy quote

• We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  64 Copy quote

• I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.

  John Adams

  Son, Revolutionary, Poet

  6 Copy quote

• Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.

  John Adams

  Opportunity, Problem, Disguise

  38 Copy quote

• Power must never be trusted without a check.

  John Adams

  Power, Checks, Trusted

  John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams”

  108 Copy quote

• When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form

  John Adams

  Essence, Gone, Republic

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.603

  13 Copy quote

• The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.

  John Adams

  Honesty, Tyrants, People

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.110, Jazzybee Verlag

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" by John Adams, teachingamericanhistory.org. 1765.

  174 Copy quote

• 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

  "3 Biblical Tips to Stay Sane in Our Overloaded World" by Levi Ben-Shmuel, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 22, 2014.

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.173, UPNE

  61 Copy quote

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

  John Adams

  People, Handwriting

  46 Copy quote

• We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.

  John Adams

  Party, Independent, Government

  John Adams' Inaugural Address, avalon.law.yale.edu. March 4, 1797.

  35 Copy quote

• Ideology is the science of idiots.

  John Adams

  Idiot, Ideology

  107 Copy quote

• [D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

  John Adams

  Eye, Men, Intellectual

  61 Copy quote

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