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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

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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
Enemy
Stout
Turns
Fortresses
Fear
Infirmity
Take
Traitor
Mind
Gates
Storm
Unless
Turn
Fortress

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National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman, and that there is an obligation to perform such a duty absolutely irrespective of party politics or factional differences.
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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
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My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
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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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The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.
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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.
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Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
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Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
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You are apprehensive of monarchy I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.
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The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
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Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
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Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education...to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher.
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If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?
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It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
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The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
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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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What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.
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The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lye from one End to the other. The Essence of the whole will be that Dr Franklins electrical Rod, Smote the Earth and out Spring General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his Rod - and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy Negotiations Legislation and War.
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What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?
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Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
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