John Adams

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”

— John Adams

“While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”

— 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

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

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

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

— 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

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

— 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

“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

“A government of laws, and not of men.”

— 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

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

— John Adams

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

— 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

“Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.”

— John Adams