Quotes from John Adams
...an Angel convoying me to the abodes of the blessed on high to converse with the Spirits of just Men made perfect...
- John Adams
You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
- John Adams
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.
- John Adams
A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
- John Adams
I hope very soon to be better, for I have removed my Family into the Country, to my old Habitation at Braintree, and have determined to shake off a little of that Load of public and private Care which has for some Time oppressed me. If I had not, I should soon have shaken off this mortal Body.
- John Adams
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
- John Adams
L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
- John Adams
The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.
- John Adams
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge...
- 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
It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
- John Adams
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
- John Adams