Quote

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

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
Vices
Cardinal
Danger
Cardinals
Company
Continual
Chase
Sensible
Vice
Folly
Vanity

More quotes by 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
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
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
Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
John Adams
Image
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.
John Adams
Image
I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
John Adams
Image
He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
John Adams
Image
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
John Adams
Image
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
Image
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.
John Adams
Image
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
John Adams
Image
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.
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
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
I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
John Adams
Image
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
John Adams
Image
The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
John Adams
Image
We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
John Adams
Image
Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.
John Adams
Image
Ideology is the science of idiots.
John Adams