John Adams

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man.

Diary entry (26 July 1796), 1796

I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. … The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.

Letter to Abigail Adams (28 December 1794), Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1794

My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet the common fate.

On the Vice-Presidency of the United States, in a letter to Abigail Adams (19 December 1793)., 1793

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

Ch. 3 Marchamont Nedham: Errors of Government and Rules of Policy" Seventh Rule, 1787

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.

This is attributed to Adams in The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858) by Henry Stephens Randall, p. 587, 1787

All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (23 August 1787), The Works of John Adams., 1787

Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.

To an ambassador (1785), as quoted in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (1851), by Charles F. Adams, p. 392., 1785

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

Letter to John Quincy Adams (14 May 1781), 1781

There is nothing which I dread so much as a 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.

Letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), "The Works of John Adams", vol 9, p. 511, 1780

I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all.

Letter to Horatio Gates (23 March 1776), 1776

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

Letter to Abigail Adams (7 July 1775), 1775

There is, in the human Breast, a social Affection, which extends to our whole Species.

Letter to Abigail Adams (19 October 1775). Reprinted in I ADAMS FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE 318 (L. Butterfield ed. 1963)., 1775

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.

Notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772), 1772

A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

Diary entry (14 November 1760), 1760

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. ... What a Eutopia — What a Paradise would this region be!

Diary entry (22 February 1756), 1756