John Adams

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

— John Adams

“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.”

— John Adams

“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”

— John Adams

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”

— John Adams

“My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

— John Adams

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

— John Adams

“I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

“The happiness of society is the end of government.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

“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.”

— John Adams

“Fear is the foundation of most governments.”

— John Adams

“When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

“In politics the middle way is none at all.”

— John Adams

“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.”

— John Adams

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

“The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.”

— John Adams