Top 250 John Adams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.”

— John Adams

Featured in: Opportunity Quotes

2. “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

— John Adams

Featured in: Philosophy Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

3. “To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.”

— John Adams

Featured in: Be Kind Quotes, Duty Quotes, Volunteer Quotes

4. “Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.”

— John Adams

5. “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

— John Adams

6. “Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”

— John Adams

7. “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”

— John Adams

8. “Those who trade liberty for security have neither.”

— John Adams

9. “We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!”

— John Adams

10. “We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.”

— John Adams

11. “One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.”

— John Adams

12. “I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things.”

— John Adams

13. “Ideology is the science of idiots.”

— John Adams

14. “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

16. “I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.”

— John Adams

17. “I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”

— John Adams

18. “Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”

— John Adams

19. “To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.”

— John Adams

20. “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

— John Adams

21. “We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

23. “The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”

— John Adams

24. “People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.”

— John Adams

25. “Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.”

— John Adams

26. “Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.”

— John Adams

27. “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. What a Utopia! What a paradise this region would be.”

— John Adams

28. “It’s of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished.”

— John Adams

29. “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”

— John Adams

30. “Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

32. “Thanks to God that he gave me stubborness when I know I am right.”

— John Adams

33. “Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.”

— John Adams

34. “My history of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed “a step toward darkness,” cruelty, perfidy, despotism, death and I wish we were out of danger of bigotry and Jesuitism.”

— John Adams

35. “When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.”

— John Adams

36. “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

— John Adams

37. “I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.”

— John Adams

38. “Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.”

— John Adams

39. “When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form.”

— John Adams

40. “There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.”

— John Adams

41. “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.”

— John Adams

42. “Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

— John Adams

43. “I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.”

— John Adams

44. “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.”

— John Adams

45. “There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.”

— John Adams

46. “There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.”

— John Adams

47. “If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”

— John Adams

48. “It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up, at such a season as the present.”

— John Adams

49. “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”

— John Adams

Featured in: Reading Quotes

50. “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”

— John Adams