Link Copied!
John Adams Quotes (1735-1826)
President, Author, Leader
-100px.png)
-100px.jpg)
About John Adams
John Adams (30 October 1735 – 4 July 1826) was an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second president of the United States (1797–1801), the first vice president (1789–1797), and as a Founding Father was a leader of American independence from the British Empire. Adams was a political theorist in the Age of Enlightenment who promoted republicanism and a strong central government. His innovative ideas were frequently published. He was also a dedicated diarist and correspondent, particularly with his wife and key advisor Abigail. He was the father of John Quincy Adams.
Best John Adams Quotes
Shortest
Earliest
Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful John Adams quotes.
“A government of laws, and not of men.”
“Thanks be to God, that he gave me Stubborness, when I know I am right.”
“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?”
“What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?”
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”
“It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.”
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”
“Virtue is not always amiable. Integrity is sometimes ruined by prejudices and by passions.”
“Government has no right to hurt the hair of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.”
“A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.”
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
“Government has no right to hurt a hair on the head of an atheist for his opinions. Let him have a care of his practices.”
“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”
John Adams Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of John Adams quotes by topic.
John Adams on Christianity 11 quotes
“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?”
John Adams on American Revolution 10 quotes
“I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in such abhorrence...”
John Adams on Government 7 quotes
“[A] Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
John Adams on United States 6 quotes
“Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.”
John Adams on Property 4 quotes
View all 4 quotes on Property →John Adams on Education 4 quotes
“A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare an appearance as a Jacobite or a Roman Catholic, that is, as rare as a comet or an earthquake.”
John Adams on Slavery 3 quotes
“Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery.”
John Adams on Freedom of the press 3 quotes
“The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.”
John Adams on Liberty 3 quotes
“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 on Corruption 3 quotes
“Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.”
John Adams on Slavery in the United States 2 quotes
“Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.”
John Adams on United States Declaration of Independence 2 quotes
“Flights of oratory... especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly would never oppose.”
What John Adams Said About Others
Discover personal opinions John Adams shared regarding contemporaries.
John Adams on Jesus 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Jesus →John Adams on Thomas Paine 2 quotes
“I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine.”
John Adams on Joseph Priestley 2 quotes
“Inquisitions and Despotisms are not alone in persecuting Philosophers. The people themselves, we see, are capable of persecuting a Priestley, as another people formerly persecuted Socrates.”
John Adams on Isaac Newton
John Adams on John Locke
John Adams on Elizabeth Willing Powel
John Adams on Cicero
“As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same character, his authority should have great weight.”
John Adams on George Washington
John Adams on Thomas Jefferson
“Your character in history may easily be foreseen. Your administration will be quoted by philosophers as a model of profound wisdom; by politicians, as weak, superficial, and shortsighted. Mine, like Pope's woman, will have no character at all.”
John Adams on Tacitus
“Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.”
John Adams on Algernon Sidney
“I have lately undertaken to read Algernon Sidney on government. … As often as I have read it, and fumbled it over, it now excites fresh admiration that this work has excited so little interest in the literary world. As splendid an edition of it as the art of printing can produce — as well for the intrinsic merit of the work, as for the proof it brings of the bitter sufferings of the advocates of liberty from that time to this, and to show the slow progress of moral, philosophical, and political illumination in the world — ought to be now published in America.”
Quotes About John Adams
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about John Adams from others.
William A. DeGregorio on John Adams
“[T]he paradox of Adams's personality; he genuinely loved and had deep compassion for humanity but never learned to deal with individual human beings. To his immediate family, he was a warm, generously loving man; to outsiders, he appeared cold, aloof, conceited. As a youth he was driven by ambition. He was determined to be a man of substance and, if circumstances afforded the opportunity, a great man. Throughout his life he wrestled with his passions. From his mother he inherited his pugnacity, drive, ready temper, and broad mood swings. He frequently fell to black despair, fits of depression that were triggered usually by the onset of some illness, public criticism, or lack of recognition of his achievements. Some historians believe that he may have been manic-depressive. Somewhat paranoid, too, he was quick to see in his unpopularity a plot by others to discredit him and steal credit for themselves. A proper Puritan, he was shocked by the open sexuality of eighteenth-century France. At a dinner party in Bordeaux in 1778, a Madame de Texel, addressing Adams with innocent frankness, wondered aloud how Adam and Eve ever learned how to have sex, for no one else was around to explain the facts of life to them. Adams was thoroughly embarrassed, having never before heard a woman discuss such matters. He blushed but quickly regained his composure to explain with mock seriousness.”
Joseph J. Ellis on John Adams
“Adams wished to warn his fellow Americans against all revolutionary manifestos that envisioned a fundamental break with the past and a fundamental transformation in human nature or society that supposedly produced a new age. All such utopian expectations were illusions, he believed, driven by what he called "ideology," the belief that imagined ideals, so real and seductive in theory, were capable of being implemented in the world. . . . His insistence that elites were unavoidable realities in all societies, however, made him vulnerable to the charge of endorsing aristocratic rule in America, when in fact he was attempting to suggest that the inevitable American elite must be controlled, its ambitions channeled toward public purposes. . . . Although misunderstood by many of his contemporaries, the realistic perspective that Adams proposed - and the skepticism toward utopian schemes he insisted upon - has achieved considerable support in the wake of the failed 20th-century attempts at social transformation in the communist bloc.”
Benjamin Franklin on John Adams
“I am persuaded, ... that Mr. Adams meant well for his country, was always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”
Emma Goldman on John Adams
“Truly, I believe we need a new Declaration of Independence. Is there no modern Jefferson or Adams?”
Thomas Jefferson on John Adams
“He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being who made him. He is profound in his views and accurate in his judgment, except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable that I pronounce you will love him, if ever you become acquainted with him. He would be, as he was, a great man in Congress.”
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on John Adams
“What for me makes people like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and John Adams and George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan such extraordinary leaders is that they had integrity through and through. What they were on the inside and what they said on the outside was harmonious. There are a lot of people like that. I think that if people try to live a very different personal life not consistent with the role they've assumed as a governor or senator or president, we lose something as a nation.”
Benjamin Rush on John Adams
“He saw the whole of a subject at a single glance, and by a happy union of the powers of reasoning and persuasion often succeeded in carrying measures which were at first sight of an unpopular nature”
Lucy Stone on John Adams
“In the revolution, Mrs. Adams said to her husband, “It seems to me that while you are struggling for your own liberty, you are not applying the principle universally” — the women and the slaves had been left out. The principle was not applied then, and has not been applied since.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to John Adams
“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.”
“Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!”
“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress!”
“The "divinity" of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.”
“The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry. . . . There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation. . . Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”
“The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in His truth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost … There is no authority civil or religious: There can be no legitimate government but what is administered by the Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation.”
About John Adams
John Adams (30 October 1735 – 4 July 1826) was an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second president of the United States (1797–1801), the first vice president (1789–1797), and as a Founding Father was a leader of American independence from the British Empire. Adams was a political theorist in the Age of Enlightenment who promoted republicanism and a strong central government. His innovative ideas were frequently published. He was also a dedicated diarist and correspondent, particularly with his wife and key advisor Abigail. He was the father of John Quincy Adams.