John Adams




Quotes by This Author


“The science of government is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take place of, indeed to exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have 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.” (John Adams, The American Enlightenment, p. 163.)

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams, October 11, 1798.)

Then John Adams gave this prophetic observation: “We shall very soon have parties formed; a court and country, and those parties will have names given them. One party in the house of representatives will support the president and his measures and ministers; the other will oppose them. A similar party will be in the senate; these parties will study with all their arts, perhaps with intrigue, perhaps with corruption, at every election to increase their own friends and diminish their opposers. Suppose such parties formed in the senate and then consider what factious divisions we shall have there upon every nomination.” (John Adams, The Founders Constitution, Vol. 4, p. 107. July 1789.)

“Republican governments could be supported only by pure Religion or Austere Morals. Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” (John Adams, 1775.)

“Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity that shapes our ends…Why, then, should we defer the Declaration?...You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to see the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die Colonists, die slaves, die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold.

“Be it so. Be it so.

“If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready…. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

“But whatever may be our fate, be assured…that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood, but it will stand and it will richly compensate for both.

“Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. . . .

“Before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence forever.” (John Adams, expressing his sentiments on signing the Declaration of Independence)

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.” (John Adams, The Works of John Adams, 6:9, p. 280.)

“I always consider the establishment 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.” (John Adams)

“Politics are the divine science, after all.” (John Adams, Letter to James Warren The American Enlightenment, p. 189. June 17, 1780.)

“How is it possible that any man should ever think of making it [politics] subservient to his own little passions and mean private interests?…is the end of politics a fortune, a family, a gilded coach, a train of horses, and a troop of livery servants, balls at Court, splendid dinners and suppers? Yet the divine science of politics is at length in Europe reduced to a mechanical system composed of these materials.” (John Adams, Letter to James Warren The American Enlightenment, p. 189. June 17, 1782.)

“The people of America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands that Providence ever committed to so small a number.” (John Adams, The American Enlightenment, p. 257.)

“You certainly never felt the terrorism, excited by Genet, in 1793, when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution in the government… nothing but [a miracle] could have saved the United States from a total revolution of government.” (John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. June 30, 1813.)

“It's of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished” (John Adams, a principle which was supported by a belief in God, and that those who escape justice in this life, would not in the next.)

“The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think...Let us read and recollect and impress upon our souls the views and ends of our forefathers…” (John Adams, prior to the War for Independence)

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” (John Adams, in a letter to Benjamin Rush April 18, 1808.)

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.” (John Adams)

“You have Rights antecedent to all earthly governments; Rights that
cannot he repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.” (John Adams)

“Liberty 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.” (John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Fuedal Law, 1965.)