John Adams (1735-1826)

John Adams was a Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain. During the latter part of the Revolutionary War and in the early years of the new nation, he served the Continental Congress of the United States as a senior diplomat in Europe. Adams was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with important contemporaries, including his wife and advisor Abigail Adams and his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson.

Quotes

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.

America
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Thomas Jefferson still lives.
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty but it is religion and morality alone that can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.

Patriotism
We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.… Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
All the perplexities, confusions, and distress in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

America, Money
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Laws
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.

Facts
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.
Jefferson still survivies.
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
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.
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.