John Adams (1735–1826) was an American lawyer, author, and statesman. This Founding Father was the first vice president 1789–97 and the second president 1797–1801 of the United States.
After studying law at Harvard, Adams became famous for questioning Britain’s right to tax its American colonies. At the First Continental Congress in 1774, he argued that the British Parliament had no legal authority over its colonies. He quickly became the foremost advocate for breaking from Britain.
At the Second Continental Congress on 1-July-1776, Adams proposed autonomy and persuaded the delegates from the colonies to embrace a declaration of independence. That resolution was approved and signed on 2-July but was only formally adopted on 4-July. Adams believed that the 2-July was America’s real birthday and refused to celebrate 4-July for the rest of his life in protest.
After independence, Adams served as America’s diplomat to France, Holland, and Great Britain. He then returned to America and became vice president for George Washington. In 1796, he was elected the second president of the United States. His Federalist Party soon split, and Adams lost his presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1800. In due course, the two Founding Fathers began a famous 14-year correspondence of 158 letters (109 written by Adams and 49 by Jefferson.) Adams and Jefferson died on the same day.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Adams
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
—John Adams
Topics: Hypocrisy
The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
—John Adams
The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. 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.
—John Adams
Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.
—John Adams
Topics: Popularity
In politics the middle way is none at all.
—John Adams
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
—John Adams
Topics: Words
Fear is the foundation of most government.
—John Adams
Topics: Government
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion… in private self-defense.
—John Adams
Topics: Defense
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
—John Adams
Topics: America
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
—John Adams
Topics: Freedom, Thinking
Yesterday the greatest question was decided which was ever debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided upon men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.
—John Adams
Topics: America
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
—John Adams
Topics: Freedom, Government
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams
Topics: Writing, Reading
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
Topics: Government
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
Topics: Religion
Liberty, according to my metaphysics…is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
—John Adams
Topics: Freedom
Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes 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
Topics: Government
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
—John Adams
Topics: Liberty
The happiness of society is the end of government.
—John Adams
Topics: Society
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.
—John Adams
Topics: Grief
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.
—John Adams
Topics: Passion, Facts, Act, Wishes
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
—John Adams
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
—John Adams
Topics: Mind, The Mind
But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and sixthe swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
—John Adams
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
—John Adams
Topics: Power
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.
—John Adams
Topics: Liberty, Justice
If (the) empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and morality should be overthrown with it, what advantages will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entire
—John Adams
Topics: Hypocrisy
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
Topics: Independence
All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
—John Adams
You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America. The great mass of the people is an expression that deserves analysis. New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided, if their propensity was not against us, that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British. Marshall, in his life of Washington, tells us, that the southern States were nearly equally divided. Look into the Journals of Congress, and you will see how seditious, how near rebellion were several counties of New York, and how much trouble we had to compose them. The last contest, in the town of Boston, in 1775, between whig and tory, was decided by five against two. Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.
—John Adams
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