John Adams Quotes - Page 2

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• We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people

  John Adams

  People, Moral, Constitution

  16 Copy quote

• It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

  John Adams

  Children, Ambition, Compassion

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.74, Penguin

  62 Copy quote

• Ideology is the science of idiots.

  John Adams

  Idiot, Ideology

  107 Copy quote

• To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

  John Adams

  Believe, Men, Honest

  5 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

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

  John Adams

  Education, Freedom, Knowledge

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

  34 Copy quote

• Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact.

  John Adams

  Passion, Patriotic, Law

  John Adams (1971). “The Works [of] John Adams, Second President of the United States: Life of John Adams”

  173 Copy quote

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

  John Adams

  Libertarian Party, Liberty, Majority

  67 Copy quote

• The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  32 Copy quote

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

  John Adams

  Motivational, Horse, Exercise

  "Presidential Proverbs: Quotes From U.S. Presidents Past, Present, and Future" by Kevin Daum, www.inc.com. November 09, 2016.

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  89 Copy quote

• ...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

  82 Copy quote

• 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

  120 Copy quote

• The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.

  John Adams

  Sunday, Appearance, Prove

  8 Copy quote

• 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)

  139 Copy quote

• As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.... The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

  John Adams

  Christian, Country, Religious

  168 Copy quote

• The date will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

  John Adams

  Sports, 4th Of July, Believe

  Letter to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776

  66 Copy quote

• Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

  John Adams

  Party, Government, Unnecessary War

  John Adams (2016). “John Adams: Writings from the New Nation, 1784-1826”, p.814, Library of America

  103 Copy quote

• 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

  49 Copy quote

• 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)

  123 Copy quote

• My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!

  John Adams

  Religion, Revolution

  107 Copy quote

• When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.

  John Adams

  People, Undone, Legislature

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  47 Copy quote

• To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

  John Adams

  Volunteer, Virtue, Be Good

  "What The Founding Fathers Said About Success Will Change Your Approach To Life", www.huffingtonpost.com. September 17, 2013.

  70 Copy quote

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

  John Adams

  Mankind, Possession, Curse

  John Adams, Robert Joseph Taylor “Papers of John Adams”, Harvard University Press

  31 Copy quote

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