Abigail Adams quotes

Abigail Adams was an influential American First Lady and adviser to her husband, President John Adams. Known for her extensive correspondence and advocacy for women's rights, her letters provide valuable insight into early American history. She is remembered as a progressive thinker and a pioneering voice for equality. Here are 46 of her quotes:

Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.

Abigail Adams

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.

Abigail Adams

Do not put such unlimited powers in the hands of the husband, Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

Abigail Adams

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Abigail Adams

To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.

Abigail Adams

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Abigail Adams

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Abigail Adams

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

Abigail Adams

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams

Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex.

Abigail Adams

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

Abigail Adams

The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.

Abigail Adams

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

Abigail Adams

Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

Abigail Adams

Its never to late to get back on your feet though we wont live forever make sure you accomplish what you were put here for.

Abigail Adams

My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

Abigail Adams

But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

Abigail Adams

I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.

Abigail Adams

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

Abigail Adams

Patriotism in the female s*x is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.

Abigail Adams