Top 60 Samuel Adams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Give credit to whom credit due.”

— Samuel Adams

2. “Nil desperandum, – Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.”

— Samuel Adams

3. “If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

— Samuel Adams

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4. “It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.”

— Samuel Adams

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5. “All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.”

— Samuel Adams

6. “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.”

— Samuel Adams

7. “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”

— Samuel Adams

8. “Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.”

— Samuel Adams

9. “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”

— Samuel Adams

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10. “What a glorious morning this is!”

— Samuel Adams

11. “How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”

— Samuel Adams

12. “If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.”

— Samuel Adams

13. “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”

— Samuel Adams

14. “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”

— Samuel Adams

15. “What a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.”

— Samuel Adams

16. “Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”

— Samuel Adams

17. “The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.”

— Samuel Adams

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18. “A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed.”

— Samuel Adams

19. “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”

— Samuel Adams

20. “There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

— Samuel Adams

21. “If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.”

— Samuel Adams

22. “The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.”

— Samuel Adams

23. “Let no man thirst for good beer.”

— Samuel Adams

24. “If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves.”

— Samuel Adams

25. “A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.”

— Samuel Adams

26. “Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.”

— Samuel Adams

27. “We may look up to Armies for Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honord.”

— Samuel Adams

28. “The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”

— Samuel Adams

29. “Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.”

— Samuel Adams

30. “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.”

— Samuel Adams

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31. “Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.”

— Samuel Adams

32. “If our Trade be taxed, why not our Lands, or Produce in short, everything we possess? They tax us without having legal representation.”

— Samuel Adams

33. “The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.”

— Samuel Adams

34. “We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.”

— Samuel Adams

35. “Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”

— Samuel Adams

36. “We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.”

— Samuel Adams

37. “A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.”

— Samuel Adams

38. “In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.”

— Samuel Adams

39. “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.”

— Samuel Adams

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40. “We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.”

— Samuel Adams

41. “We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”

— Samuel Adams

42. “Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!”

— Samuel Adams

43. “It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.”

— Samuel Adams

44. “Principally, and first of all, I resign my soul to the Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying on the merits of Jesus Christ for the pardon of my sins.”

— Samuel Adams

45. “I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it.”

— Samuel Adams

46. “No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”

— Samuel Adams

47. “We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them. Mankind are governed more by their feeling than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.”

— Samuel Adams

48. “One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress.”

— Samuel Adams

49. “It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”

— Samuel Adams

50. “Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.”

— Samuel Adams