Inspirational Quotes by John Adams (American Head of State)

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

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
—John Adams
Topics: Religion

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

In politics the middle way is none at all.
—John Adams
Topics: Politics, Politicians

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
—John Adams
Topics: Power

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. 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. Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the People, who have… a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers. 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. Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.
—John Adams
Topics: Democracy, Government

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

You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; right derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe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

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 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

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion… in private self-defense.
—John Adams
Topics: Defense

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

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: Desire, Desires

Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.
—John Adams
Topics: The Past, Past

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

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

Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.
—John Adams
Topics: Vanity

If I had refused to institute a negotiation or had not persevered in it, I would have been degraded in my own estimation as a man of honor.
—John Adams
Topics: Resolve, Endurance, Perseverance

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain
—John Adams
Topics: Philosophy, Liberty, Revolutionaries, Architecture, Revolutions

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: Country, Children

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
—John Adams
Topics: Liberty

Genius is sorrow’s child.
—John Adams
Topics: Genius

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

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

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: Justice, Liberty

I was a warrior so my son could be a farmer so his son could be a poet.
—John Adams
Topics: War, Warrior

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

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

Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams
Topics: Writing, Reading

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