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Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.

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
Practice
Inmost
Next
Aimed
Dictate
Popularity
Necessary
Ought
Virtue
Wisdom

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The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.
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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.
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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
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Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
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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.
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My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!
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Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
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[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
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Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
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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.
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[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
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[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.
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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 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.
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This is a revolution, damn it! We're going to have to offend somebody!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.
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