Quote

Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.

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
Human
Humans
Contagion
Foul
Slavery
Character

More quotes by John Adams

Image
What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.
John Adams
Image
The 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
Image
I am quite content to come home and go to Farming, be a select Man, and owe no Man any Thing but good Will. There I can get a little health and teach my Boys to be Lawyers.
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
There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.
John Adams
Image
[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
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
I drink no cider, but feast on Philadelphia beer.
John Adams
Image
A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
John Adams
Image
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
John Adams
Image
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
John Adams
Image
I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.
John Adams
Image
The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
John Adams
Image
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
John Adams
Image
It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up, at such a season as the present.
John Adams
Image
You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
John Adams
Image
The idea of infidelity [a disbelief in the inspiration of the Scriptures or the divine origin of Christianity] cannot be treated with too much resentment or too much horror. The man who can think of it with patience is a traitor in his heart and ought to be execrated [denounced] as one who adds the deepest hypocrisy to the blackest treason.
John Adams
Image
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
John Adams
Image
We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
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