Quotes by John Adams

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.

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

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.

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.

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.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

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.