Quotes from John Adams

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon 's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally. { Letter to Thomas Jefferson , November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits }

L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.

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

And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge...

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.

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote: 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.

Without the pen of Paine , the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.

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

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

Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them.

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? { Letter to Thomas Jefferson , May 19, 1821 }

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!

When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.

Everything in life should be done with reflection.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

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.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud? [ Letter to judge F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816 .]

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

All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from want of honor or virtue, but from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.