Quote

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

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
Done
Refuse
Must
Honest
Always
Somebody
Men
Wise
Public
Business
Others
Government
Decline

More quotes by John Adams

Image
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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
There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
John Adams
Image
You are apprehensive of monarchy I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.
John Adams
Image
Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
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
[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.
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
Virtue is not always amiable.
John Adams
Image
Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
John Adams
Image
A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
John Adams
Image
In politics the middle way is none at all.
John Adams
Image
I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.
John Adams
Image
One sailor will do us more good than two soldiers.
John Adams
Image
They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
Image
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
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
There 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
Image
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
John Adams
Image
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
John Adams