Tuesday, October 15, 2013
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
John Adams
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
John Adams
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
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.
John Adams,You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
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.
John Adams, Journal, 1772
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.
John Adams, Letter to Benjamin Rush, 18 April 1808
