Quote

If the empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world but if all religion and morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained?

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
Happy
Gained
Religion
Empire
World
Hypocrisy
Empires
Thrown
Indeed
Overthrown
Morality
Superstition
Advantage
Superstitions

More quotes by John Adams

Image
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
John Adams
Image
Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
John Adams
Image
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
Image
This is my religion ... joy and exaltation in my own existence ... so go ahead and snarl ... bite ... howl, you Calvinistic divines and all you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian.
John Adams
Image
There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.
John Adams
Image
If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position.
John Adams
Image
[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.
John Adams
Image
A government of laws, and not of men.
John Adams
Image
Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.
John Adams
Image
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.
John Adams
Image
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
John Adams
Image
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
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
All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
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
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
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
Image
In days of yore, the poet's pen From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.
John Adams
Image
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?
John Adams
Image
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams