Quotes from John Adams

If I had refused to institute a negotiation or had not persevered in it, I would have been degraded in my own estimation as a man of honor.

I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

The four most miserable years of my life . . .

The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars...it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government.

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.

Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.

As long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.

One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.

If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle

The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.

I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.

You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.

We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest.

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

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

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.

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, without the strictest Caution and watchfulness over my self.

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

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

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.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

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.

Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrendered their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.