John Adams Quotes - 12 quotes

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John Adams

John Adams (1735-1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the second President of the United States from 1797 to 1801. He was born on October 30, 1735, in Braintree, Massachusetts (now Quincy). Adams played a pivotal role in the American Revolution and... show more

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

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quote icon I read my eyes out, and can't read half enough neither. The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.

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quote icon Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

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

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quote icon We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

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

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quote icon I have seen a queen of France with 18 million livres of diamonds on her person, but I declare that all the charms of her face and figure added to all the glitter of her jewels did not impress me as much as that little shrub right there. Now your mother always said that I never delighted enough in the mundane, but now I find that if I look at even the smallest thing my imagination begins to roam the milky way!

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quote icon A scholar is always made alone And sober. Studies can be pursued to good purpose Only by yourself.

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quote icon :You do not need to quote great men to show you are one. :But we must take care, lest borne away by a torrent of passion we make shipwreck of conscience. :whatever our wishes, our inclinations Or the dictums of our passions They cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. :For the love of god, Sam! This is barbarism! Barbarism! Do you approve of this? People are hurt when they fight for what is rightfully theirs! Do you approve of brutal and illegal acts to enforce a political principle, Sam? Answer me that, can you? I am afraid of where this may lead us if we do not chart our course carefully together. :Men Need to think that they have made their own decisions Not had them forced upon them :Politics is the art of the possible. :Thinking aloud is a habit responsible for much of mankind's misery. :The full measure of british atrocity is too terrible to relate. :Objects of the most stupendous magnitude. Measures which will affect the lives of millions, born and unborn are now before us. We must expect a great expense of blood to obtain them but we must always remember that a free constitution of civil government cannot be purchased a too dear a rate as there is nothing on this side of Jerusalem, of greater importance to mankind. My worthy colleague from Pennsylvania has spoken with great ingenuity and eloquence. He's given you a grim prognostication of our national future, but where he foresees apocalypse I see hope. I see a new nation ready to take its place in the world. Not an empire, but a republic. And a republic of laws, not men. Gentlemen, we are in the very midst of revolution. The most complete unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of the world. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves, and their children. I am not without apprehensions, gentlemen. But the end that we have in sight is more than worth all the means. My belief says that the hour has come. My judgement approves this measure and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, all that I am and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready to stake upon it. While I'll live, let me have a country. A free country. :When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the polical bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth to the separate and equal station to to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them A decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain un what's that word there? unalienable. with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is in the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. The history of the present king of GB is a history of repeated injuries, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. In every stage of this oppression, we have petitionned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury, a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of the free people. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states that they're absolved from all allegiance to the british crown. And for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor. :

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quote icon 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.

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quote icon Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

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quote icon My thoughts are so clear to me... each one takes perfect shape within my mind. But when I speak, when I offer them to others, they seem to lose all definition.

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