Top 22 John Adams Quotes

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

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.

Genius is sorrow‘s child.

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.

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.

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

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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