Quote

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

John Adams

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Adams
Age: 90 †
Born: 1735
Born: October 19
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
2Nd U.S. President
Diplomat
Lawyer
Political Philosopher
Politician
Statesperson
Braintree
Massachusetts
President Adams
J. Adams
President John Adams
Mind
Loose
Humankind
Virtue
Education
Cannot
Dogmatism
Human
Confine
Humans
Superstition
Must
Superstitions

More quotes by John Adams

Image
Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
John Adams
Image
Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests in short against the gates of earth and hell.
John Adams
Image
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
John Adams
Image
This is my religion ... joy and exaltation in my own existence ... so go ahead and snarl ... bite ... howl, you Calvinistic divines and all you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian.
John Adams
Image
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.
John Adams
Image
If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence.
John Adams
Image
When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.
John Adams
Image
Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
John Adams
Image
Power must never be trusted without a check.
John Adams
Image
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: nor is the law less stable than the fact.
John Adams
Image
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
Image
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation: The doctrine of a supreme, intelligent sovereign of the universe, I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
John Adams
Image
Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
John Adams
Image
Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not if honest man refuse it, others will not.
John Adams
Image
As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
John Adams
Image
He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
John Adams
Image
There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
John Adams
Image
[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
John Adams
Image
Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves but in none of them were they ever more successful than in the invention and establishment of the canon and the feudal law.
John Adams
Image
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams