Top 250 John Adams Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 5 of 6

201. “The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.”

— John Adams

202. “The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”

— John Adams

203. “They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.”

— John Adams

204. “The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests.”

— John Adams

205. “I am well pleased with what I hear of you: The principal Satisfaction I can expect in Life, in future will be in your good Behavior and that of my other Children. My Hopes from all of you are very agreable. God grant, I may not be disappointed.”

— John Adams

206. “They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.”

— John Adams

207. “A government of laws, and not of men.”

— John Adams

208. “But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”

— John Adams

209. “The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.”

— John Adams

210. “Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence.”

— John Adams

211. “The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.”

— John Adams

212. “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

— John Adams

213. “It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge’s view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.”

— John Adams

214. “We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.”

— John Adams

215. “And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge...”

— John Adams

216. “Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”

— John Adams

217. “The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”

— John Adams

218. “He wrote as a young man that God’s noblest gift was the gift of an inquiring mind.”

— John Adams

219. “I consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for public service.”

— John Adams

220. “I discovered books and read forever.”

— John Adams

221. “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

— John Adams

222. “We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.”

— John Adams

223. “Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.”

— John Adams

224. “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.”

— John Adams

225. “There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state.”

— John Adams

226. “Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either; on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.”

— John Adams

227. “I request that they may be considered in confidence, until the members of Congress are fully possessed of their contents, and shall have had opportunity to deliberate on the consequences of their publication; after which time, I submit them to your wisdom.”

— John Adams

228. “You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.”

— John Adams

229. “It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.”

— John Adams

230. “Here, every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defense, not for offense...”

— John Adams

231. “National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.”

— John Adams

232. “Pray how does your asparagus perform?”

— John Adams

233. “Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests; in short against the gates of earth and hell.”

— John Adams

234. “We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!”

— John Adams

235. “I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”

— John Adams

236. “The Christian Religion as I understand it is the best.”

— John Adams

237. “The national defense must be provided for as well as the support of Government; but both should be accomplished as much as possible by immediate taxes, and as little as possible by loans.”

— John Adams

238. “The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.”

— John Adams

239. “Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.”

— John Adams

240. “Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.”

— John Adams

241. “I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.”

— John Adams

242. “Now to what higher object, to what greater character, can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready at command, to assist the feeble and friendless, to discountenance the haughty and lawless, to procure redress to wrongs, the advancement of rights, to assert and maintain liberty and virtue to discourage and abolish tyranny and vice.”

— John Adams

243. “Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.”

— John Adams

244. “Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.”

— John Adams

245. “If my superiors shall permit me to come home, I hope it will be soon; if they mean I should stay abroad, I am not able to say what I shall do, until I know in what capacity. One thing is certain, that I will not live long without my family.”

— John Adams

246. “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.”

— John Adams

247. “Mr. Jefferson has reason to reflect upon himself. How he will get rid of his remorse in his retirement, I know not. He must know that he leaves the government infinitely worse than he found it, and that from his own error or ignorance.”

— John Adams

248. “Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves; but in none of them were they ever more successful than in the invention and establishment of the canon and the feudal law.”

— John Adams

249. “It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.”

— John Adams

250. “Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.”

— John Adams