Top 72 Samuel Adams Quotes
#2. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.
Samuel Adams
#3. Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.
Samuel Adams
#4. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.
Samuel Adams
#5. Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Samuel Adams
#6. Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Samuel Adams
#7. Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote ... that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.
Samuel Adams
#8. If our Trade be taxed, why not our Lands, or Produce in short, everything we possess? They tax us without having legal representation.
Samuel Adams
#9. If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves.
Samuel Adams
#10. Every one knows that the exercise of military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects ...
Samuel Adams
#11. I firmly believe that the benevolent Creator designed the republican Form of Government for Man.
Samuel Adams
#12. What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.
Samuel Adams
#13. We may look up to Armies for Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honord.
Samuel Adams
#14. May every citizen ... have a proper sense of the Deity upon his mind and an impression of the declaration recorded in the Bible, 'Him that honoreth Me I will honor, but he that despiseth Me shall be lightly esteemed.'
Samuel Adams
#15. The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise men, calmly look around us and consider what is best to be done ... Let associations and combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just rights.
Samuel Adams
#16. How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Samuel Adams
#17. Principally, and first of all, I resign my soul to the Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying on the merits of Jesus Christ for the pardon of my sins.
Samuel Adams
#19. All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.
Samuel Adams
#20. In the midst of these pleasing ideas 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.
Samuel Adams
#21. I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.
Samuel Adams
#22. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.
Samuel Adams
#24. Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.
Samuel Adams
#25. It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue
Samuel Adams
#26. Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
Samuel Adams
#27. It is therefore recommended ... to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor.
Samuel Adams
#28. I cannot however help repeating Piety, because I think it indispensible. Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security.
Samuel Adams
#29. It bodes very ill for government when men are exalted to places of high trust through their own solicitations. He only fills a place with dignity who is invited to it by his fellow citizens from the experience they have had of his adequate abilities.
Samuel Adams
#30. We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.
Samuel Adams
#31. The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.
Samuel Adams
#32. Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams
#33. We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.
Samuel Adams
#34. A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed.
Samuel Adams
#35. Nil desperandum,
Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.
Samuel Adams
#36. No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
Samuel Adams
#37. If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.
Samuel Adams
#38. [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.
Samuel Adams
#39. But there are some persons who wouldpersuade the people never to make use of their constitutional rights.
Samuel Adams
#40. We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.
Samuel Adams
#41. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Samuel Adams
#42. Could I be assured that America would remain virtuous, I would venture to defy the utmost Efforts of Enemies to subjugate her.
Samuel Adams
#43. Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive.
Samuel Adams
#44. It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.
Samuel Adams
#45. Hence as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the Administration of public affairs.
Samuel Adams
#46. A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.
Samuel Adams
#47. It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Samuel Adams
#48. Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel Adams
#49. It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.
Samuel Adams
#50. Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.
Samuel Adams
#51. If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
Samuel Adams
#52. We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection
Samuel Adams
#53. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
Samuel Adams
#54. [T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family.
Samuel Adams
#55. The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty ... The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promuligated in the New Testament.
Samuel Adams
#56. He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.
Samuel Adams
#57. The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.
Samuel Adams
#58. A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.
Samuel Adams
#59. The name of the Lord (says the Scripture) is a strong tower; thither the righteous flee and are safe (Proverbs 18:10). Let us secure His favor and He will lead us through the journey of this life and at length receive us to a better.
Samuel Adams
#60. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man ...
Samuel Adams
#61. What a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.
Samuel Adams
#62. I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it.
Samuel Adams
#63. If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.
Samuel Adams
#64. [M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.
Samuel Adams
#65. I would advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were revealed from Heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine men were to perish, and only one of a thousand to survive and retain his liberty. One such freeman must possess more virtue, and enjoy more happiness, than a thousand slaves.
Samuel Adams
#66. Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!
Samuel Adams
#67. I ... [rely] upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.
Samuel Adams
#68. One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress.
Samuel Adams
#69. In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.
Samuel Adams
#70. If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.
Samuel Adams
#71. Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.
Samuel Adams
#72. The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.
Samuel Adams
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
