John
Adams Quotes
"A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention
and to inflame his ambition."
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish
to keep them in working order.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy.
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating
all his laws.
"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."
--October 11, 1798
"The happiness of society is the end of government."
"I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house (the
White House) and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none
but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!"
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion...
in private self-defense.
Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy
or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did
not commit suicide.
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be
trusted with unlimited power."
"I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere,
my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result
is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more
philosophy than all the libraries I have seen."
December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson
Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned
in polite Company, I mean Hell."
[John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817]
We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!”
[April 18, 1775, on the eve of the Revolutionary War
after a British major ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and those
with them to disperse in “the name of George the Sovereign King
of England." ]
=Elem/Middle School K-8
