John Adams

John Adams

Founding Father, Politician

John Adams was a Founding Father and the second President of the United States, known for his role in drafting the Declaration of Independence and advocating for liberty.

Men Government Law People Religious Liberty
Born
October 30, 1735
Died
July 4, 1826
Quotes
406
Rank
#3377

Quote collection

John Adams quotes (page 14 of 21)

406 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel... Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating the divine authority of those books?"

Christian Country Inspiration
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position."

Inspirational Brain World
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"What a pity it is that our Congress had not known this discovery, and that Alexander Hamilton’s projects of raising an army of fifty thousand Men, ten thousand of them to be Cavalry and his projects of sedition Laws and Alien Laws and of new taxes to support his army, all arose from a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off! and that the same vapours produced his Lyes and Slanders by which he totally destroyed his party forever and finally lost his Life in the field of Honor."

Party Army Men
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call them by what names you please, sigh and groan and fret, and sometimes stamp and foam and curse, but all in vain. The decree is gone forth, and it cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth must be established in America."

Names America Liberty
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors."

Voting Curiosity Wish
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic church, from the Council of Nicea, and long before, to this day."

Christian Long Miracle
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority."

Kings Rights People
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families."

Foundation Morality
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet."

Son Revolutionary Poet
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse."

Believe Men Honest
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character."

Character Slavery Foul
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many."

Honesty Tyrants People
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws."

Law Liberty Individual
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones."

Evil Madness Folly
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty."

Political Liberty Example
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion."

Law Practice Doe
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart"

Grief Heart Sadness
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

Christian Religion United States
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"Whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected... a passion for distinction."

Happiness Success Wise
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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
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"The Europeans are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never get rid of. They are all infected with episcopal and presbyterian creeds, and confessions of faith. They all believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe, Newton's universe and Herschell's universe, came down to this little ball, to be spit upon by Jews. And until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world."

Believe Principles Prejudice
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