Quotes by John Adams
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In politics the middle way is none at all.
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
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.
The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
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.
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.
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
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.
The happiness of society is the end of government.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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.
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.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
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.
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
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.
A government of laws, and not of men.
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.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
Genius is sorrow's child.
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
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