Top 250 John Adams Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

— John Adams

52. “Power must never be trusted without a check.”

— John Adams

53. “Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.”

— John Adams

54. “Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?”

— John Adams

55. “A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man’s attention and to inflame his ambition.”

— John Adams

56. “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.”

— John Adams

57. “I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.”

— John Adams

58. “The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.”

— John Adams

59. “Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

— John Adams

60. “We are in the the very midst of a revolution, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”

— John Adams

61. “But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six-the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.”

— John Adams

62. “When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one.”

— John Adams

63. “If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle.”

— John Adams

64. “Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?”

— John Adams

65. “If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, and that a free country!”

— John Adams

66. “There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.”

— John Adams

67. “Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.”

— John Adams

68. “Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.”

— John Adams

69. “The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.”

— John Adams

70. “The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.”

— John Adams

71. “There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element spring all governments. “For a nation to be free, it is only necessary that she wills it.” For a nation to be slave, it is only necessary that she wills it.”

— John Adams

72. “The people “have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.””

— John Adams

73. “No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.”

— John Adams

74. “When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.”

— John Adams

75. “I drink no cider, but feast on Philadelphia beer.”

— John Adams

76. “It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.”

— John Adams

77. “I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.”

— John Adams

78. “You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. And you can write ten times better than I can.”

— John Adams

79. “Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.”

— John Adams

80. “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”

— John Adams

81. “I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.”

— John Adams

82. “Let frugality and industry be our virtues.”

— John Adams

83. “All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.”

— John Adams

84. “America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.”

— John Adams

85. “Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not.”

— John Adams

86. “One sailor will do us more good than two soldiers.”

— John Adams

87. “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

89. “Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.”

— John Adams

90. “In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected; they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.”

— John Adams

91. “I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!”

— John Adams

92. “If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

— John Adams

93. “The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.”

— John Adams

94. “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

— John Adams

95. “In days of yore, the poet’s pen From wing of bird was plunder’d, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove’s own eagle sunder’d. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet’s numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.”

— John Adams

96. “The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.”

— John Adams

97. “Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.”

— John Adams

98. “The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land.”

— John Adams

99. “Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty.”

— John Adams

100. “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.”

— John Adams