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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Political literature6 quotes
The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing. — John Adams · 1765The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing. — John Adams · 1765Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... and a desire to know-but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge. I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers. — John Adams · 1765The judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and the executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that. — John Adams · 1776Fear is the foundation of most governments. — John Adams · 1776Political speech4 quotes
What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love? — John Adams · 1797We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. — John Adams · 1797Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people? — John Adams · 1797Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads prompted by good hearts, as an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested. — John Adams · 1797Courtroom speech1 quote
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 · 1770