Top 50 Abigail Adams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.”

— Abigail Adams

Featured in: Education Quotes, Learning Quotes, Study Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, School Quotes

2. “Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.”

— Abigail Adams

3. “The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.”

— Abigail Adams

Featured in: Habit Quotes

4. “We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”

— Abigail Adams

5. “A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people, but if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king.”

— Abigail Adams

6. “Its never to late to get back on your feet though we wont live forever make sure you accomplish what you were put here for.”

— Abigail Adams

7. “These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.”

— Abigail Adams

8. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.”

— Abigail Adams

9. “Great necessities call out great virtues.”

— Abigail Adams

10. “I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”

— Abigail Adams

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes

11. “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”

— Abigail Adams

12. “If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.”

— Abigail Adams

13. “History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.”

— Abigail Adams

14. “When men know not what to do, they ought not to do they know not what.”

— Abigail Adams

15. “Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.”

— Abigail Adams

16. “I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other.”

— Abigail Adams

17. “How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking!”

— Abigail Adams

18. “I can hear of the brilliant accomplishments of any of my sex with pleasure and rejoice in that liberality of sentiment which acknowledges them.”

— Abigail Adams

19. “O, I have read his Heart in his wicked eyes many a time. The very devil is in them.”

— Abigail Adams

20. “Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”

— Abigail Adams

21. “Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods.”

— Abigail Adams

22. “If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunites of seeing the world, and obtaining a knowledge of Mankind than any of your cotemporarys, that you have never wanted a Book, but it has been supplied you, that your whole time has been spent in the company of Men of Literature and Science. How unpardonable would it have been in you, to have been a Blockhead.”

— Abigail Adams

23. “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”

— Abigail Adams

24. “To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.”

— Abigail Adams

25. “A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?”

— Abigail Adams

26. “Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex.”

— Abigail Adams

27. “The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.”

— Abigail Adams

28. “Heaven grant me that I may thus rejoice in my children, thus see them ornaments to their Country, and blessings to their parents.”

— Abigail Adams

Featured in: Country Quotes

29. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

— Abigail Adams

30. “What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak?”

— Abigail Adams

31. “I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give.’”

— Abigail Adams

32. “May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.”

— Abigail Adams

33. “I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”

— Abigail Adams

34. “Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.”

— Abigail Adams

35. “Deliver me from your cold, phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.”

— Abigail Adams

36. “A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.”

— Abigail Adams

37. “What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.”

— Abigail Adams

38. “Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point.”

— Abigail Adams

39. “The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.”

— Abigail Adams

40. “The theater has been called the pulse of the people.”

— Abigail Adams

41. “I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature...”

— Abigail Adams

42. “Remember the Ladies.”

— Abigail Adams

43. “These are the times when a genius wants to live.”

— Abigail Adams

44. “If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.”

— Abigail Adams

45. “Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.”

— Abigail Adams

46. “What is meat for one is not for another – no accounting for fancy.”

— Abigail Adams

47. “Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.”

— Abigail Adams

48. “The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex, was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned.”

— Abigail Adams

49. “The Character which a youth acquires in the early part of his Life is of great importance towards his future prosperity-one false step may prove irretrievable to his future usefulness.”

— Abigail Adams

50. “But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.”

— Abigail Adams