John Adams Quotes

“The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.”

“No man is entirely free from weakness and imperfection in this life. Men of the most exalted genius and active minds are generally most perfect slaves to the love of fame.”

“Virtue is not always amiable. Integrity is sometimes ruined by prejudices and by passions.”

“Omnium rerum domina, virtus. Virtue is the mistress of all things.”

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

“I believe there is no one principle which predominates in human nature so much in every stage of life, from the cradle to the grave, as this passion for superiority.”

“A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.”

“Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.”

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”

“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

“There is one resolution I will not omit. Resolved that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies.”

“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.”

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

“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution, not from want of honour or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”

“The Hebrews have done more to civilise men than any other nation.”

“My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.”

“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.”

“I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.”

“By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man. Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocrisies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.”

“As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.”

“Is there no way for two friendly souls to converse together, although the bodies are 400 miles off? Yes, by letter. But I want a better communication. I want to hear your think, or to see your thoughts.”

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

“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

“Thomas Jefferson survives.”