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The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.

John Adams

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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
Laid
Families
Morality
Private
Foundation
National
Must
Foundations

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National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman, and that there is an obligation to perform such a duty absolutely irrespective of party politics or factional differences.
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The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.
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There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind, Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
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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.
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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.
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But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
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In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.
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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.
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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
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I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
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When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.
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Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
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Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.
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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.
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A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
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The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.
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It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.
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Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.
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