Quote

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.

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
Every
Produce
Blessings
Virtue
Virtues
Augmentation
Individual
Require
Furnace
Part
Governments
Furnaces
States
Vices
Purification
Government
Assuming
Refinement
Wells
Individuals
Affliction
Well
Blessing
Produces

More quotes by John Adams

Image
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.
John Adams
Image
If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
John Adams
Image
The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
John Adams
Image
He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
John Adams
Image
Here 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
Image
Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
John Adams
Image
I 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
Image
I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame
John Adams
Image
I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.
John Adams
Image
Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
John Adams
Image
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
John Adams
Image
They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.
John Adams
Image
What is to become of an independent statesman, one who will bow the knee to no idol, who will worship nothing as a divinity but truth, virtue, and his country? I will tell you he will be regarded more by posterity than those who worship hounds and horses and although he will not make his own fortune, he will make the fortune of his country.
John Adams
Image
Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
John Adams
Image
While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
John Adams
Image
No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'
John Adams
Image
They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
Image
The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
John Adams
Image
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
John Adams
Image
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.
John Adams