Top 26 Quotes By John Adams

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

A government of laws, and not of men.

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

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

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.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

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.

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.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

There is no such thing as human wisdom; all is the providence of God

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.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

A Pen is certainly an excellent Instrument, to fix a Mans Attention and to inflame his Ambition.

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.

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

The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.

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

Genius is sorrow's child.