Book detail: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This volume includes a wide array of John Adams's personal and professional correspondence, political writings, and other documents. It also features a detailed biography of Adams, providing insight into his life and times. The book is further enhanced with notes and illustrations that offer context and analysis of Adams's work.
The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.
Read more
“I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800'.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“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.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“We are in the the very midst of a revolution, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. And you can write ten times better than I can.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call them by what names you please, sigh and groan and fret, and sometimes stamp and foam and curse, but all in vain. The decree is gone forth, and it cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth must be established in America.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Conclude not from all this that I have renounced the Christian religion. . . . Far from it. I see in every page something to recommend Christianity in its purity, and something to discredit its corruptions. . . . The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six-the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“If there is ever an amelioration of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests; in short against the gates of earth and hell.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles; but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man ... Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocracies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“The Christian Religion as I understand it is the best.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Where annual elections end, there slavery begins ... Humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“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.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“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.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations