175 Quotes by John Adams
John Adams, a Founding Father and the second President of the United States, played a pivotal role in shaping the nation's early history. Known for his intellectual rigor and commitment to democratic principles, Adams was a driving force behind the movement for independence and a key figure in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. His presidency saw the establishment of important governmental structures and foreign policy initiatives, often amidst a backdrop of domestic and international challenges. Adams' dedication to public service and his vision for a strong yet balanced government underscored his legacy as a statesman deeply invested in the welfare of the fledgling nation. His contributions, both as a diplomat and a leader, laid the groundwork for the democratic ideals upon which the United States was built.
John Adams Quotes
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone. (Meaning)
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. (Meaning)
Those who trade liberty for security have neither. (Meaning)
Every problem is an opportunity in disguise. (Meaning)
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. (Meaning)
To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do. (Meaning)
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people. (Meaning)
Power must never be trusted without a check. (Meaning)
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. (Meaning)
A government of laws, and not of men. (Meaning)
People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity. (Meaning)
Fear is the foundation of most governments. (Meaning)
The happiness of society is the end of government. (Meaning)
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. (Meaning)
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. (Meaning)
We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it. (Meaning)
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist. (Meaning)
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. (Meaning)
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write. (Meaning)
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (Meaning)
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it. (Meaning)
Virtue is not always amiable. (Meaning)
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket. (Meaning)
In general, our generals were outgeneralled. (Meaning)
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
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.
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.
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.
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
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.
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.
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
As the government of the United States of America 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, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!
Ideology is the science of idiots.
Power must never be trusted without a check.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
Our whole system of banks is a violation of every honest principle of banks. There is no honest bank but a bank of deposit. A bank that issues paper at interest is a pickpocket or a robber. But the delusion will have its course. ... An aristocracy is growing out of them that will be as fatal as the feudal barons if unchecked in time.
A government of laws, and not of men.
In politics the middle way is none at all.
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.
The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.
...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.
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle
To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.
Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
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.
He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.
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.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
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.
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
[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.
We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
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.
The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly [with your God]. This is enough.
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected; they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.
The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.
[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.
Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.
We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
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.
It will be celebrated... with pomp and parade... bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.
The destiny of America is to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.
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. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.
Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.
Here, every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defense, not for offense.
Before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence for ever!
The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world.
There's no such thing as a free lunch, unless you have a coupon for a free lunch...or someone gives you a lunch...never mind.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.
Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship.
The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.
America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (12 May 1780)
The happiness of society is the end of government.
A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.
When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.
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.
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.
This is a revolution, damn it! We're going to have to offend somebody!
But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the Faith may be, I firmly believe.
The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.
When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form
Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education...to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher.
We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
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.
Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.
The Constitution is ...the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen
We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest.
We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.
When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.
Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
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.
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.
A lawyer once told a jury that the person his client stood accused of having killed was about to walk through the courtroom door. When the jurors looked startled, the lawyer asserted that if those jurors had wondered, even for one second that the victim might appear, that belief constituted enough reasonable doubt for them to find his client innocent.
The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.
Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.
Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.
Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.
Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.
Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?
It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.
As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.
We may... affirm that the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates.
I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.
The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.
The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land.
Politics are a labyrinth without a clue.
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.
I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
Everything in life should be done with reflection.
To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
Thanks be to God, that he gave me Stubborness, when I know I am right.
The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty.
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.
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.
Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.
The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion.
It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a Baptism, not a Marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost... There is no Authority civil or religious: there can be no legitimate Government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All, without it is Rebellion and Perdition, or in more orthodox words Damnation.
No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'
Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, "where annual elections end, there slavery begins." These great men ... should be (chosen) once a year-Like bubbles on the sea of matter bourne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.
I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.
― John Adams Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
