John Adams (1735–1826) was an American lawyer, author, and statesman. This Founding Father was the first vice president 1789–97 and the second president 1797–1801 of the United States.
After studying law at Harvard, Adams became famous for questioning Britain’s right to tax its American colonies. At the First Continental Congress in 1774, he argued that the British Parliament had no legal authority over its colonies. He quickly became the foremost advocate for breaking from Britain.
At the Second Continental Congress on 1-July-1776, Adams proposed autonomy and persuaded the delegates from the colonies to embrace a declaration of independence. That resolution was approved and signed on 2-July but was only formally adopted on 4-July. Adams believed that the 2-July was America’s real birthday and refused to celebrate 4-July for the rest of his life in protest.
After independence, Adams served as America’s diplomat to France, Holland, and Great Britain. He then returned to America and became vice president for George Washington. In 1796, he was elected the second president of the United States. His Federalist Party soon split, and Adams lost his presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1800. In due course, the two Founding Fathers began a famous 14-year correspondence of 158 letters (109 written by Adams and 49 by Jefferson.) Adams and Jefferson died on the same day.
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I request that they may be considered in confidence, until the members of Congress are fully possessed of their contents, and shall have had opportunity to deliberate on the consequences of their publication; after which time, I submit them to your wisdom.
—John Adams
Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
—John Adams
Topics: Ambition
I read my eyes out and cant read half enough. The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
—John Adams
Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams
Topics: Education
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. Like a Coach and sixthe swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
—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 the facts and evidence.
—John Adams
Topics: Facts
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
—John Adams
Topics: Hypocrisy
All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
—John Adams
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
—John Adams
Topics: Weakness
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
—John Adams
Topics: Power
The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
—John Adams
Topics: Knowledge
Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.
—John Adams
Topics: The Past, Past
I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
—John Adams
Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination — everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
—John Adams
Topics: Religion
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams
Topics: Writing, Reading
Liberty, according to my metaphysics…is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
—John Adams
Topics: Freedom
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.
—John Adams
Topics: Desires, Desire
I Pray Heaven to Bestow The Best of Blessing on THIS HOUSE, and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof!
—John Adams
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.
—John Adams
You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America. The great mass of the people is an expression that deserves analysis. New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided, if their propensity was not against us, that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British. Marshall, in his life of Washington, tells us, that the southern States were nearly equally divided. Look into the Journals of Congress, and you will see how seditious, how near rebellion were several counties of New York, and how much trouble we had to compose them. The last contest, in the town of Boston, in 1775, between whig and tory, was decided by five against two. Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.
—John Adams
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
—John Adams
Topics: Religion
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
—John Adams
The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
—John Adams
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
—John Adams
Topics: Words
The happiness of society is the end of government.
—John Adams
Topics: Society
There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.
—John Adams
Topics: Commitment
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.
—John Adams
Topics: Children
The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.
—John Adams
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