John Adams Quotes

#1. Defeat appears to me preferable to total Inaction.

John Adams

#2. I discovered books and read forever

John Adams

#3. A militia law, requiring all men, or with very few exceptions besides cases of conscience, to be provided with arms and ammunition ... is always a wise institution, and, in the present circumstances of our country, indispensable.

John Adams

#4. Conclude not from all this that I have renounced the Christian religion ... Far from it. I see in every page something to recommend Christianity in its purity, and something to discredit its corruptions ... The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.

John Adams

#5. Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.

John Adams

#6. The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.

John Adams

#7. A government of laws, and not of men

John Adams

#8. I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800'.

John Adams

#9. Eloquence in public assemblies is not the surest road to fame and preferment, at least unless it be used with great caution, very rarely, and with great reserve.

John Adams

#10. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, and that a free country!

John Adams

#11. All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

John Adams

#12. Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

John Adams

#13. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.

John Adams

#14. 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

#15. Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.

John Adams

#16. [I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

John Adams

#17. When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

John Adams

#18. Your Letters concerning Miss N. have given me as much Concern as they ought-not knowing the Character nor what to advise, but feeling all a Fathers Tenderness, longing to be at home that I might enquire and consider and take the Care I ought.

John Adams

#19. The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.

John Adams

#20. They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.

John Adams

#21. You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.

John Adams

#22. The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

John Adams

#23. Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, 'that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

John Adams

#24. Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.

John Adams

#25. A native of America who cannot read or write is ... as rare as a comet or an earthquake.

John Adams

#26. The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.

John Adams

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

John Adams

#28. Always stand on principle ... even if you stand alone.

John Adams

#29. Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.

John Adams

#30. The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.

John Adams

#31. Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

John Adams

#32. Everything in life should be done with reflection.

John Adams

#33. In Virginia... all geese are swans.

John Adams

#34. 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

#35. He was very intemperate, and could not write until he had quickened his thoughts with large draughts of rum and water; that he was, in short, a bad character, and not fit to be placed in such a situation.

John Adams

#36. I never saw the face of Cobbett ... I should not know him if I met him in my porridge dish.

John Adams

#37. You and I ought not to die,before we have explained ourselves to each other.

John Adams

#38. If we take a survey of the greatest actions ... in the world ... we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position.

John Adams

#39. Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.

John Adams

#40. Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?

John Adams

#41. When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles; but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.

John Adams

#42. I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.

John Adams

#43. I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.

John Adams

#44. 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

#45. July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion.

John Adams

#46. I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things.

John Adams

#47. As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.

John Adams

#48. As good government is an empire of laws, how shall your laws be made? In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good.

John Adams

#49. Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.

John Adams

#50. Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, and measure in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are intimately interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of a revolution the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.

John Adams

#51. Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?

John Adams

#52. The happiness of society is the end of government.

John Adams

#53. God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

John Adams

#54. The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative.

John Adams

#55. To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

John Adams

#56. The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that ... and all the glory of it.

John Adams

#57. I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.

John Adams

#58. You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

John Adams

#59. I request that they may be considered in confidence, until the members of Congress are fully possessed of their contents, and shall have had opportunity to deliberate on the consequences of their publication; after which time, I submit them to your wisdom.

John Adams

#60. Mr. Adams, describing a conversation with Jonathan Sewall in 1774, says: "I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination."

John Adams

#61. Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.

John Adams

#62. There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element spring all governments. "For a nation to be free, it is only necessary that she wills it." For a nation to be slave, it is only necessary that she wills it.

John Adams

#63. The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

John Adams

#64. There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.

John Adams

#65. Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.

John Adams

#66. Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?

John Adams

#67. My history of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed "a step toward darkness," cruelty, perfidy, despotism, death and I wish we were out of danger of bigotry and Jesuitism.

John Adams

#68. [I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.

John Adams

#69. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

John Adams

#70. 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

#71. I drink no cider, but feast on Philadelphia beer.

John Adams

#72. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma ... and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.

John Adams

#73. The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars ... it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government.

John Adams

#74. Liberty once lost, is lost forever.

John Adams

#75. The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.

John Adams

#76. If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.

John Adams

#77. The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land.

John Adams

#78. 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

#79. The form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

John Adams

#80. There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation ... is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral ... that it is a duty and a virtue.

John Adams

#81. The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.

John Adams

#82. He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.

John Adams

#83. I read my eyes out and can't read half enough ... the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.

John Adams

#84. When men know not what to do , they ought not to do they know not what

John Adams

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

John Adams

#86. The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers."

John Adams

#87. My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!

John Adams

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. In politics the middle way is none at all.

John Adams

#91. The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

John Adams

#92. Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

John Adams

#93. 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

#94. The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

John Adams

#95. While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.

John Adams

#96. A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

John Adams

#97. Knowledge in the head and virtue in the heart, time devoted to study or business, instead of show and pleasure, are the way to be useful and consequently happy.

John Adams

#98. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society.

John Adams

#99. An honest, sensible, humane man, ... laboring to do good rather than be rich, to be useful rather than make a show, living in modest simplicity ... is really the most respectable man in society, [and] makes himself and all about him most happy.

John Adams

#100. As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him.

John Adams