Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
John Adams

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
John Adams

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
John Adams

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
John Adams

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
John Adams

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
John Adams

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
John Adams

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.
John Adams

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
John Adams

The happiness of society is the end of government.
John Adams

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
John Adams

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
John Adams

There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
John Adams

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

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
John Adams

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
John Adams