John Adams
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.Collection: Knowledge
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.Collection: Government
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.Collection: God
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.Collection: Nature
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.Collection: Age
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.Collection: Knowledge
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Government
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.Collection: Great
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.Collection: Freedom
I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.Collection: Health
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Imagination
Fear is the foundation of most governments.Collection: Fear
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.Collection: Design
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.Collection: War
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.Collection: Power
The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.Collection: Government
In politics the middle way is none at all.Collection: Politics
The happiness of society is the end of government.Collection: Government
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.Collection: Society
A government of laws, and not of men.Collection: Government
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.Collection: Men
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.Collection: Government
The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.Collection: Independence
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.Collection: Imagination
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.Collection: Politics
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
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.
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.
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
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.
Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and 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.
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.
Genius is sorrow's child.
One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.Collection: Men
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.Collection: Country
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.Collection: Principles
There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.Collection: Party
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.Collection: Men
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.Collection: Government
The destiny of America is to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.Collection: Bible
When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.Collection: Hands
Those who trade liberty for security have neither.Collection: Liberty
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.Collection: Honesty
We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.Collection: Party