Top 100 Quotes About John Adams
#1. Karl stood up and pointed at the large portraits on the wall. He swept the room from George Washington to Ben Franklin to John Adams to Thomas Jefferson. "Soldier, Printer, Lawyer, Scholar. You become a politician because the people make you one, not because you desire to be one.
Jeff Ferry
#2. 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
#3. Tom Hooper had done 'John Adams,' and David Lynch did 'Twin Peaks.' I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.
Cary Fukunaga
#4. Here in France, you must practice the art of accomplishing much while appearing to accomplish little. (in the John Adams miniseries on HBO)
Benjamin Franklin
#5. I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
Gavin Bryars
#6. When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of "littleness of soul".
Paul C. Nagel
#7. This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. John Adams, U.S. President
George Washington
#8. Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president. The
Ron Chernow
#9. How hard have those intolerant of John Adams's perspective worked to strip from young people any hope of knowing the concepts and truths that help deal with life?
Foster Friess
#10. When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.
David McCullough
#11. Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.
Orson Scott Card
#12. Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.
Karl Rove
#13. In the farsighted words of Thomas Jefferson, writing to his predecessor, John Adams, 'The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Richard Dawkins
#14. American history offers no parallel to the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, spanning the first half century of the Republic ... The publication, in full and integrated form, of the remarkable correspondence between these two eminent men is a notable event.
Dumas Malone
#15. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were political enemies, but they became fast friends. And when they passed away on the same day, the last words of one of them was, The country is safe. Jefferson still lives. And the last words of the other was, John Adams will see that things go forward.
Harry S. Truman
#16. John Adams was a farmer, Abraham Lincoln a small town lawyer. Plato and Socrates were teachers. Jesus was a carpenter. To equate wisdom and judgement with occupation is at best insulting.
Mark Sheppard
#17. We live, my dear soul, in an age of trial. What will be the consequence I know not. John Adams, in a letter to Abigail Adams
David McCullough
#18. At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Allen Johnson
#19. In a moment of acute anxiety a year earlier, John Adams had wondered what would happen if "the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble" maintained such open defiance of authority. 13
Ron Chernow
#20. As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.
Rosanne Cash
#21. It was no accident that the beau ideal of his (John Adams') political philosophy was balance, since he projected onto the world the conflicting passions he felt inside himself and regarded government as the balancing mechanism that prevented those factions and furies from spending out of control.
Joseph J. Ellis
#22. If not for John Adams leading a revolution against Great Britain ... This would be the BAFTAs.
Tom Hanks
#23. What Are the Odds? Here's an astonishing fact: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were the only signers of the Declaration of Independence to become president, both died on July 4, 1826.
Kendra Hazlett Armstrong
#24. Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.
Jonathan Raban
#25. My first day on the set of 'John Adams', I was just supposed to fly to Virginia for a costume fitting. But the director figured, why not shoot it, too? So they threw me into a dress that didn't fit, gave me lines I hadn't seen, in a dialect I didn't know, and two screaming, arching infants.
Mamie Gummer
#26. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams
David McCullough
#27. Washington had learned the secrets of inducing others to follow his lead. Washington probably knew more about leadership before he celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday than John Adams discovered in his lifetime.
John Ferling
#28. John Adams, by then one of the country's founding fathers, wrote to a friend: I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.
Tom Standage
#29. I've had the philosophy that John Adams expressed, in the kind of system that we're trying to create in this country: that this is a system for moral people. It will work for no other.
Charles Koch
#30. Hyperbole has been part of elections since the days of John Adams, and there's nobody better than Joe Biden to give us a little hyperbole, as we all know.
Stephen Pagliuca
#31. Upon my return from the army to Baltimore in the winter of 1777, I sat next to John Adams in Congress, and upon my whispering to him and asking him if he thought we should succeed in our struggle with Great Britain, he answered me, "Yes-if we fear God and repent of our sins."
Benjamin Rush
#32. Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. "A native of America who cannot read or write," said John Adams, "is as rare an appearance ... as a Comet or an Earthquake.
Azar Nafisi
#33. There are plenty of Minutemen. People willing to be Minutemen. Where are the people that want to be George Washington? Where are the Benjamin Franklins? Where is Sam Adams? Where is John Adams?
Beck
#34. The economic answer to the world's problems is John Adams, not [Karl] Marx.
John Ringo
#35. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could - from a poem by Daniel Defoe, as written by Abigail to John Adams
David McCullough
#36. John Adams commented after one disastrous defeat, In general, our Generals were outgeneralled.
Anonymous
#37. I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, that two become a lawfirm, and that three or more become a congress. -John Adams
Sherman Edwards
#38. John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people ... George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
Joe Lieberman
#39. When he is wounded, I bleed. {page 262 of John Adams}
Abigail Adams
#40. Wanting to change only the British position at the top of the American social structure, John Adams feared that a "rage for innovation" would consume what was worthwhile about American culture.
John Ferling
#41. Defeat appears to me preferable to total Inaction.
John Adams
#42. The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
#43. The city has millions of stories that I don't know. Never did and never will.
John Joseph Adams
#44. You are so ridiculous," said the lion. "Thinking that your thinking is worth thinking about.
John Joseph Adams
#45. I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.
John Adams
#46. The world shall retire from me before I shall retire from the world. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#48. I discovered books and read forever
John Adams
#49. I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
John Adams
#50. A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent ... sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.
John Quincy Adams
#51. Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.
John Adams
#52. A stranger would think that the people of the United States had no other occupation than electioneering.
John Quincy Adams
#53. The historian must have no country. - JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
James W. Loewen
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write .
John Adams
#57. The surface causes of Adams's anxieties are not difficult to discern. Every activist knew the penalty for treason. Every congressman knew that prison, perhaps death, would be his reward if the American rebellion failed.
John Ferling
#58. Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
John Adams
#59. His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with gall; his tongue drips poison.
John Quincy Adams
#60. National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.
John Adams
#61. The law is an artificial human construct, quite arbitrary, and of absolutely no use anywhere else but in a court of law!
John Quincy Adams
#62. The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
John Adams
#63. John Quincy Adams resolved to the discipline of rejecting argument for argument's sake would he sees that a fellow cabinet member is trying to draw him in to debating proposals the president will already reject.
Paul C. Nagel
#64. Politics are a labyrinth without a clue.
John Adams
#65. Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
John Adams
#66. It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
John Adams
#67. I say women exhibit the most exalted virtue when they depart from the domestic circle and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their G-d!
John Quincy Adams
#68. A government of laws, and not of men
John Adams
#70. I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once ever year ... My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. I employs about an hour of my time ...
John Quincy Adams
#71. Our religion was the religion of a Book. Man must be educated on Earth for Heaven. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#72. The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.
John Quincy Adams
#73. CJ is my nickname. It stands for Cameron, and my middle name is John.
CJ Adams
#74. [L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
John Adams
#75. John Quincy Adams' depression was treated by his aunt with some reliable remedies, first sleep and then compassion. She said, " He was half cared for by having someone to care for him.
Paul C. Nagel
#76. Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
John Adams
#77. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble away ... the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively asserted and at others countenances His disciples in asserting that He was God.
John Quincy Adams
#78. Dogbert: So, Since Columbus is dead, you have no evidence that the earth is round. Dilbert: Look. You can Ask Senator John Glenn. He orbited the earth when he was an astronaut. Dogbert: So, your theory depends on the honesty of politicians. Dilbert: Yes ... no, wait ...
Scott Adams
#79. You're going to have things to repent, boy,' Mr. John had told Nick. 'That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.
Ernest Hemingway,
#80. I launched 'Lightspeed' magazine in 2010, and from day one, we've had a strict mission to try to have gender parity in the magazine because that was the first hurdle that science fiction and fantasy have been dealing with for a long time.
John Joseph Adams
#81. Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done.
John Quincy Adams
#82. 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
#83. Ideology is the science of idiots.
John Adams
#84. Be not intimidated ... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
John Adams
#85. I was born for a controversial world, and I cannot escape my destiny. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#86. We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.
John Quincy Adams
#87. We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
John Adams
#88. The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.
John Quincy Adams
#89. 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
#90. A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name ... One of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity ... he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory.
John Quincy Adams
#92. We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.
John Adams
#93. 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
#95. You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!
John Adams
#96. 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
#97. I want to see my wife and children every day, I want to see my grass and blossoms and corn ... But above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books.
John Adams
#98. Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.
John Quincy Adams
#99. Why have I not genius to start some new thought? Some thing that will surprise the world?
John Adams
#100. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.
John Adams
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