John Adams Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by John Adams
John Adams Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from John Adams on Wise Famous Quotes.
Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.
The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.
You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.
If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle
I cannot think it either Vanity or Virtue to acknowledge, that the Acquisition and communication of Knowledge, are the sole Entertainment of my Life
The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
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.
Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.
Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
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.
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.
The Constitution is ... the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen
The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up, at such a season as the present.
The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.
The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.
The only way to form an army to be confided in, was a systematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.
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.
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?
I read my eyes out and can't read half enough ... the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
Human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.
When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form
The United States of America ... has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Muslims.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.
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.
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.