Abigail Adams Quotes

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

No one is without their difficulties, whether in High, or low Life, & every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.

My Dear Son... remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.

Its never to late to get back on your feet though we wont live forever make sure you accomplish what you were put here for

Great necessities call out great virtues.

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.

Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.

A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people, but if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king.

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.

Great learning and superior abilities...will be of little value and small estimation unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.

If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.

I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.

What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.

My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature.

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

Heaven grant me that I may thus rejoice in my children, thus see them ornaments to their Country, and blessings to their parents.

The Character which a youth acquires in the early part of his Life is of great importance towards his future prosperity-one false step may prove irretrievable to his future usefulness.

History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.

The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other.

The heart is long, very long in receiving the convictions that is forced upon it by reason... affection still lingers in the Bosom, even after esteem has taken its flight.

Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.

But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.

Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.

A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.

Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point

The house shakes...with the roar of the cannon. No sleep for me tonight.

What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak?

When men know not what to do, they ought not to do they know not what

The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.

These are the times when a genius wants to live.

The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.

I acknowledge myself a unitarian

What is meat for one is not for another--no accounting for fancy.

When he is wounded, I bleed. {page 262 of John Adams}

O, I have read his Heart in his wicked eyes many a time. The very devil is in them.

Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.