John Adams Quotes

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things.

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?

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.

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams

It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.

I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.

The form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.

Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

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

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.

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

The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.

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

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

Let frugality and industry be our virtues.

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.

A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.

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

It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?

The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers."

Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.

I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.

Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.

A native of America who cannot read or write is . . . as rare as a comet or an earthquake.

Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?

We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.

Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.

Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?

I read my Eyes out, and cant read half enough neither. The more one reads the more one sees We have to read.

Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.

Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.

Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

The rules are simple and easily understood by anyone who has once seen the game, but to the totally uninitiated they appear to be hopelessly unintelligible.

Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.

The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.

[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.

I shall have the liberty to think for myself.

Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.

Politics are a labyrinth without a clue.

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.