01c. 1780 ADHad I been chosen president again I am certain I could not have lived another year.John Adams / quote ↗
03c. 1780 ADWhen 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.John Adams / quote ↗
04c. 1780 ADI must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.John Adams / quote ↗
06c. 1780 ADAll 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.John Adams / quote ↗
08c. 1780 ADThe 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.John Adams / quote ↗
09c. 1780 ADPower always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.John Adams / quote ↗
10c. 1780 ADBecause power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.John Adams / quote ↗
11c. 1780 ADLiberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.John Adams / quote ↗
12c. 1780 ADPower always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.John Adams / quote ↗
13c. 1780 ADThere 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 / quote ↗
14c. 1780 ADLiberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.John Adams / quote ↗
16c. 1780 ADAbuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.John Adams / quote ↗
17c. 1780 ADI, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.John Adams / quote ↗
18c. 1780 ADI 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 / quote ↗
19c. 1780 ADMy country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.John Adams / quote ↗
20c. 1780 ADHere 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1780 ADI must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.John Adams / quote ↗
23c. 1780 ADOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.John Adams / quote ↗
24c. 1780 ADThe essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.John Adams / quote ↗
