John Adams Quotes - Page 15

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• A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.

  John Adams

  Ambition, Government, People

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.158, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.

  John Adams

  Philosophy, Book, Mean

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• 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

  Mean, Sleep, Cutting

  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.197

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• We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest.

  John Adams

  Fear, Character, People

  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.114

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• No truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well being of communities.

  John Adams

  Inspiration, Heart, Men

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 9: Letters and State Papers 1799 - 1811”, p.135, Jazzybee Verlag

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• But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six-the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.

  John Adams

  Horse, America, Waiting

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.176

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• A single assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will not hesitate to vote itself perpetual. This was one fault of the Long Parliament; but more remarkably of Holland, whose assembly first voted themselves from annual to septennial, then for life, and after a course of years, that all vacancies happening by death or otherwise, should be filled by themselves, without any application to constituents at all.

  John Adams

  Years, Long, Ambitious

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.195

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• A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.

  John Adams

  Passion, Errors, Prejudice

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.87, Hackett Publishing

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• What a pity it is that our Congress had not known this discovery, and that Alexander Hamilton’s projects of raising an army of fifty thousand Men, ten thousand of them to be Cavalry and his projects of sedition Laws and Alien Laws and of new taxes to support his army, all arose from a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off! and that the same vapours produced his Lyes and Slanders by which he totally destroyed his party forever and finally lost his Life in the field of Honor.

  John Adams

  Party, Army, Men

  John Adams, Benjamin Rush (1892). “Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle... Series A-[B]”

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• . . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

  John Adams

  Religious, Father, Rights

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.293

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• 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.

  John Adams

  Christian, Book, Order

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.479

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• Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.

  John Adams

  Country, Taverns, Dozen

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• Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.

  John Adams

  Country, Independent, Heart

  John Adams (2016). “John Adams: Writings from the New Nation, 1784-1826”, p.813, Library of America

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• The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.

  John Adams

  Mean, Punishment, Government

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• I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

  John Adams

  Grief, Faith Religion, Historical

  Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. September 03, 1816.

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• My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

  John Adams

  Historical, Mind, Progress

  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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• The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests.

  John Adams

  Religious, Ignorance, Men

  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.5

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• There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.

  John Adams

  Ambition, People, President

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.583

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• Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic church, from the Council of Nicea, and long before, to this day.

  John Adams

  Christian, Long, Miracle

  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams (2006). “"Ye Will Say I Am No Christian": The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values”

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• If there is ever an amelioration of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it.

  John Adams

  Important, Regulation, Philosopher

  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.117

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• The only way to form an army to be confided in, was a systematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.

  John Adams

  Hero, Mean, Army

  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.86

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• I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.

  John Adams

  Wish, Lays, Dies

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• 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.

  John Adams

  Wisdom, Jesus, Justice

  John Adams (1961). “Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Diary, 1755-1770”, Belknap Pr

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• Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences.

  John Adams

  Graduation, Country, Opportunity

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.259

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• If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.

  John Adams

  Kings, Men, Voice

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.90, Jazzybee Verlag

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