John Adams Quotes About Virtue

Quotes about: Virtue

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

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.229

• It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

  John Adams

  Children, Ambition, Compassion

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.74, Penguin

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

  John Adams

  Motivational, Horse, Exercise

  "Presidential Proverbs: Quotes From U.S. Presidents Past, Present, and Future" by Kevin Daum, www.inc.com. November 09, 2016.

• Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

  John Adams

  Education, Mind, Superstitions

  "John Adams: Quotes & Facts". Book by Blago Kirov, 2016.

• Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.

  John Adams

  Principles, Politics, Stand Alone

  "Who is Bernie Sanders?" by Tom Pappalardo, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 28, 2015.

• To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

  John Adams

  Volunteer, Virtue, Be Good

  "What The Founding Fathers Said About Success Will Change Your Approach To Life", www.huffingtonpost.com. September 17, 2013.

• [D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

  John Adams

  Eye, Men, Intellectual

• Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.

  John Adams

  Moving, Soul, Independence

  John Adams, Daniel LEONARD, Jonathan SEWALL (1819). “Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc”, p.25

• The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Christian

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.421

• We may... affirm that the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates.

  John Adams

  Land, Balance, Liberty

  John Adams, Frederick K. Sanders (1975). “John Adams Speaking: Pound's Sources for the Adams Cantos”

• All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

  John Adams

  Nature, Money, Ignorance

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. August 23, 1787.

• You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

  John Adams

  Life And Love, Poetry, Liberty

  Letter to John Quincy Adams, 14 May 1781

• The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

  John Adams

  Government, People, Liberty

  Letter to Zabdiel Adams, "Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 4", memory.loc.gov. June 21, 1776.

• [I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

  John Adams

  Liberty, Foundation, Principles

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.401

• Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark" . . . If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?

  John Adams

  Passion, Differences, People

  John Adams, Daniel LEONARD, Jonathan SEWALL (1819). “Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc”, p.11

• The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.

  John Adams

  Drama, Tragedy, World

  John Adams (1841). “Letters of John Adams: Addressed to His Wife”, p.127

• When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form

  John Adams

  Essence, Gone, Republic

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.603

• Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.

  John Adams

  Government, Liberty, Foundation

  Massachusetts Historical Society, John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Warren (1917). “Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814”

• Let frugality and industry be our virtues.

  John Adams

  Life, Virtue, Frugality

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.58, UPNE

• Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

  John Adams

  Government, Support, Honor

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.85, Hackett Publishing

• It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.

  John Adams

  Government, People, Revolution

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (cont.) Diary. Notes of a debate in the Senate of the United States. Essays: On private revenge. On self-delusion. On private revenge. Dissertation on the canon and the feudal law. Instructions of the town of Braintree to their representative, 1765. The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym. Governor Winthrop to Governor Bradford. Instructions of the town of Boston to their representatives, 1768. Instructions of the town of”, p.399

• 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

  Practice, Next, Popularity

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.57

• To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

  John Adams

  Believe, Men, Honest

• The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

  John Adams

  Men, Dignity, Virtue

  John Adams (1841). “Letters, Addressed to His Wife”, p.277

• Virtue is not always amiable.

  John Adams

  Virtue, Humankind, Amiable

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (cont.) Diary. Notes of a debate in the Senate of the United States. Essays: On private revenge. On self-delusion. On private revenge. Dissertation on the canon and the feudal law. Instructions of the town of Braintree to their representative, 1765. The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym. Governor Winthrop to Governor Bradford. Instructions of the town of Boston to their representatives, 1768. Instructions of the town of”, p.188

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