Quotes from John Adams

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?

Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

This is my religion ... joy and exaltation in my own existence ... so go ahead and snarl ... bite ... howl, you Calvinistic divines and all you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian.

Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.

Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.

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?

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

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

The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion.

The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.

Ideology is the science of idiots.

Politics are the divine science, after all.

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

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

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.