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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.

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
Kings
Liberty
Study
Secured
Rights
Englishmen
Law
Derived
History
Parliament
Would
King
Tradition

More quotes by John Adams

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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
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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.
John Adams
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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!
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.
John Adams
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I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
John Adams
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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
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Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
John Adams
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God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
John Adams
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But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
John Adams
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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
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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.
John Adams
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The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.
John Adams
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My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.
John Adams
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The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
John Adams
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People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
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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.
John Adams
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Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.
John Adams