Top 410 Quotes & Sayings by John Adams

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American president John Adams.

Last updated on November 22, 2024.

John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain and during the war, served as a diplomat in Europe. He was twice elected vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797 in a prestigious role with little power. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams as well as his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson.

American - President | October 30, 1735 - July 4, 1826

Source: Wikipedia

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

John Adams

I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.

John Adams

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

John Adams

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

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

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

John Adams

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

John Adams

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

John Adams

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

John Adams

The happiness of society is the end of government.

John Adams

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

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

In politics the middle way is none at all.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

John Adams

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

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

John Adams

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

A government of laws, and not of men.

John Adams

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

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

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

John Adams

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

John Adams

I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.

John Adams

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

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

John Adams

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.

John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

John Adams

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

The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.

John Adams

Genius is sorrow's child.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.

John Adams

Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.

John Adams

The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.

John Adams

The destiny of America is to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.

John Adams

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

John Adams

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.

John Adams

Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

John Adams

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

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.

John Adams

...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.

John Adams

One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.

John Adams

We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!

John Adams

We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people

John Adams