Word Celebrity Blog

Some Quotations By John Adams

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."
 
"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."

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
   
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
    
"No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it."
    
"The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body."
    
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."
























"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of  our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
   
"You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket."
    
"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."
   
"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
    
"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide."

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
























"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty but it is religion and morality alone that can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand."

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.… Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

"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 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."

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense."

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak."

"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."

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

"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."

"If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?"

"In politics the middle way is none at all."
 
"Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write."

"Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power."

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

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

"The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries."