John Adams quotes - page 8

John Adams was an American statesman, lawyer, and Founding Father, who served as the second President of the United States. A leader in the movement for American independence, he played a key role in drafting the Declaration of Independence. He greatly influenced the early development of the nation’s government and political philosophy. Here are 241 of his quotes:

Nor were the poor negroes forgotten. Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson, of Virginia, ever asserted the rights of negroes in stronger terms.

John Adams

I adore the idea of gradual abolitions! But who shall decide how fast or how slowly these abolitions shall be made?

John Adams

Major Greene this evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ.

John Adams

I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws.

John Adams

By what means this great and important alteration in the religious, moral, political, and social character of the people of thirteen colonies, all distinct, unconnected, and independent of each other, was begun, pursued, and accomplished, it is surely interesting to humanity to investigate, and perpetuate to posterity.

John Adams

The Europeans are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never get rid of.

John Adams

Are riches, honors, and beauty going out of fashion? Is not the rage for them, on the contrary, increased faster than improvement in knowledge?

John Adams

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.

John Adams

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality; an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it.

John Adams

We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!

John Adams

A single assembly will never be a steady guardian of the laws.

John Adams

The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated.

John Adams

The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together - a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected. In this research, the gloriole of individual gentlemen, and of separate States, is of little consequence. The means and the measures are the proper objects of investigation. These may be of use to posterity, not only in this nation, but in South America and all other countries.

John Adams

The American Revolution was not a common event.

John Adams

Rivalries must be controlled, or they will throw all things into confusion; and there is nothing but despotism or a balance of power which can control them.

John Adams

I really wish the Jews again in Judea, an independent nation.

John Adams

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!

John Adams

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote: I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.

John Adams

When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "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." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined."

John Adams

Where do we find a precept in the Gospel requiring Ecclesiastical Synods? Convocations? Councils? Decrees? Creeds? Confessions? Oaths? Subscriptions? and whole cart-loads of other trumpery that we find religion incumbered with in these days?

John Adams

Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness.

John Adams

Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!

John Adams