John Adams Quotes About Liberty

Quotes about: Liberty

• 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

• 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

• 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, Trust, Freedom

  'Notes for an Oration at Braintree' (Spring 1772)

• Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

  John Adams

  Children, Freedom, Patriotic

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.197

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

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

• [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

  Joseph E. SPRAGUE, John Adams (1826). “An Eulogy on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, etc”, p.36

• 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

  John Adams (2004). “The Portable John Adams”, p.219, Penguin

• ...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

  Government, Cities, People

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.50, Penguin

• The most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited.

  John Adams

  Jealous, Government, People

• 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, Passion

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

• 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, Power

  A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law (1765)

• 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.

• [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

• The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

  John Adams

  Ideas, Law, Justice

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.9

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

  John Adams

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

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

• Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

  John Adams

  Freedom, Government, Forever

  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.95, UPNE

• Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.

  John Adams

  Moving, Soul, Independence

  John Adams, Daniel LEONARD, Jonathan SEWALL (1819). “Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc”, p.25

• Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

  John Adams

  Education, Freedom, Knowledge

  'A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law' (1765)

• Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

  John Adams

  Liberty, Libertarian, Pro Gun

• Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.

  John Adams

  Libertarian Party, Liberty, Majority

• 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.

• We may... affirm that the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates.

  John Adams

  Land, Balance, Liberty

  John Adams, Frederick K. Sanders (1975). “John Adams Speaking: Pound's Sources for the Adams Cantos”

• 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, Philosophy, War

  Letter to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780

• 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

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.196, Hackett Publishing

• To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. 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

  Men, Self, Hands

  "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government". Book by John Adams. Chapter 3: "Marchamont Nedham: Errors of Government and Rules of Policy", Sixth Rule, 1787.

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