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: Thinking, Freedom
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
I Pray Heaven to Bestow The Best of Blessing on THIS HOUSE, and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof!
—John Adams
Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams
Topics: Education
Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
—John Adams
Topics: Ambition
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
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
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
Topics: Children, Country
Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.
—John Adams
Topics: The Past, Past
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
Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
—John Adams
Topics: Authority
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 question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
—John Adams
Topics: Religion
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.
—John Adams
Topics: Grief
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
You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; right derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.
—John Adams
Topics: Government
The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
—John Adams
Topics: Property, Knowledge
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
—John Adams
Topics: Government, Freedom
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.
—John Adams
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries
Genius is sorrow’s child.
—John Adams
Topics: Genius
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
—John Adams
Topics: Weakness
Fear is the foundation of most government.
—John Adams
Topics: Government
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
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
Topics: Freedom
I read my eyes out and cant read half enough. The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
—John Adams
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
—John Adams
Topics: Power
In politics the middle way is none at all.
—John Adams
Topics: Politicians, Politics
The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.
—John Adams
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
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
—John Adams
Topics: Desires, Desire
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Jefferson American Head of State
- John Quincy Adams American Head of State
- George Washington American Head of State
- Calvin Coolidge American Head of State
- Abigail Adams American First Lady
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Richard Nixon American Head of State
- Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
- Lyndon B. Johnson American Head of State
- Herbert Hoover American Statesman
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