John Adams Quotes

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

"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."

"Call it then, ... the Age of Paine."

"Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute."

"Jobs and job training will be critical next year. Retraining and education will be key in order for us to be able to keep the companies we have and be able to attract new businesses."

"Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order"

"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."

"When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more."

"Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty."

"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."

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

"Genius is sorrow's child."

"All the perplexities, confusion 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."

"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."

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak."

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

"The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries."

"Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."

"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."