John Adams Quotes - Page 11

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• What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?

  John Adams

  Love, Government, Form

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.107

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• All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.

  John Adams

  Political, Mind, Politics

  Massachusetts Historical Society, John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Warren (1917). “Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814”

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

  John Adams

  Country, Determination, Swim

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.8

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• Let frugality and industry be our virtues.

  John Adams

  Life, Virtue, Frugality

  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.58, UPNE

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• 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

  Practice, United States, Slavery

  John Adams, Carolyn P. Yoder (2007). “John Adams, the writer: a treasury of letters, diaries, and public documents”, Calkins Creek Books

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• The die is cast. The people have passed the river and cut away the bridge. Last night three cargoes of tea were emptied into the harbor. This is the grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened.

  John Adams

  Cutting, Night, Bridges

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.333

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• The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

  John Adams

  Simple, Government, America

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• The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

  John Adams

  Education, War, Taken

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• If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.

  John Adams

  Real, Government, Balance

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.377

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• What is to become of an independent statesman, one who will bow the knee to no idol, who will worship nothing as a divinity but truth, virtue, and his country? I will tell you; he will be regarded more by posterity than those who worship hounds and horses; and although he will not make his own fortune, he will make the fortune of his country.

  John Adams

  Country, Horse, Independent

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.512

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• Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

  John Adams

  Stupid, Passion, Men

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.85, Hackett Publishing

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• Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors.

  John Adams

  Real, Long, Liberty

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.11, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

  John Adams

  Men, Democracies Have, Body

  John Adams (2001). “The Political Writings of John Adams”, p.406, Regnery Publishing

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• Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either; on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.

  John Adams

  Art, America, Democracy

  John Adams (2001). “The Political Writings of John Adams”, p.432, Regnery Publishing

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• 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, Illumination

  John Adams (2004). “The Portable John Adams”, p.214, Penguin

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• What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money; and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.

  John Adams

  America, Judging, Decision

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (cont.) Diary. Notes of a debate in the Senate of the United States. Essays: On private revenge. On self-delusion. On private revenge. Dissertation on the canon and the feudal law. Instructions of the town of Braintree to their representative, 1765. The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym. Governor Winthrop to Governor Bradford. Instructions of the town of Boston to their representatives, 1768. Instructions of the town of”, p.171

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• It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.

  John Adams

  Government, People, Revolution

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (cont.) Diary. Notes of a debate in the Senate of the United States. Essays: On private revenge. On self-delusion. On private revenge. Dissertation on the canon and the feudal law. Instructions of the town of Braintree to their representative, 1765. The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym. Governor Winthrop to Governor Bradford. Instructions of the town of Boston to their representatives, 1768. Instructions of the town of”, p.399

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• I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame

  John Adams

  Jealousy, Ambition, Envy

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.593

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• They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.

  John Adams

  Acknowledge, Expected

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• The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.

  John Adams

  Code Of Ethics, Christianity, Founding Fathers Religion

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

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• Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.

  John Adams

  Education, Men, Differences

  John Adams (2012). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  John Adams (1841). “Letters, Addressed to His Wife”, p.133

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• There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.

  John Adams

  War, Guilt, Greater

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• Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.

  John Adams

  Passion, Judging, Intellectual

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography”, p.79

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• There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind, Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.

  John Adams

  Mind, Enemy, Storm

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