Samuel Adams Quotes

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It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Samuel Adams

Inspirational, Life, Freedom

311 Copy quote
If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

Samuel Adams

Country, Patriotic, Men

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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom - go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

Samuel Adams

Love, Peace, Freedom

Samuel Adams' Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776.

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It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.

Samuel Adams

Country, Ignorance, Tyrants

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

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The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.

Samuel Adams

Country, Struggle, Patriotic

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Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

Samuel Adams

Long, Liberty, Extinction

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

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For no People will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can they easily be subdued, where Knowledge is diffusd and Virtue preservd . On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own Weight, without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

Samuel Adams

Patriotic, People, Ignorant

"Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814".

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The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

Samuel Adams

Gun, Strong Arms, People

Debates of the Massachusetts Convention, 1788.

93 Copy quote
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

Samuel Adams

Rights, Liberty, Together

Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

215 Copy quote
It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.

Samuel Adams

Country, Art, Fall

Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

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It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue

Samuel Adams

Liberty, Minorities, Causes

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”

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How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Samuel Adams

Tyrants, Tools, Tyranny

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

98 Copy quote
If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.

Samuel Adams

Yield, Law, Giving

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

70 Copy quote
A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed.

Samuel Adams

Citizens, Attention, Causes

170 Copy quote
If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.

Samuel Adams

Suffering, Liberty, Doom

Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

75 Copy quote
All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

Samuel Adams

Truth, Liberty, Politics

Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

82 Copy quote
Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote...that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.

Samuel Adams

Country, Offering, Voting

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

108 Copy quote
Nil desperandum, -- Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.

Samuel Adams

Being Strong, Hope, Freedom

129 Copy quote
He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

Samuel Adams

Country, Men, Feelings

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

27 Copy quote
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.

Samuel Adams

America, Enemy, Liberty

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

132 Copy quote
In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.

Samuel Adams

Art, War, Luxury

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If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

Samuel Adams

Giving Up, Mistake, Men

John White, Cecil Calvert Baltimore (2d Baron), Charles Hudson, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1904). “The planting of colonies in New England”

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If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.

Samuel Adams

People, Liberty, Virtue

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Before the formation of this Constitution it had been affirmed as a self evident truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that 'all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' This declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union & has never been disannuled. May we not from hence conclude, that the doctrine of Liberty and Equality is an article in the political creed of the United States.

Samuel Adams

Men, Rights, Self

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He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all. Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.

Samuel Adams

Men, Made, Obvious

"One Nation Under God: A Factual History of America's Religious Heritage". Book by Leon G Stevens, 2013.

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Born: September 27, 1722
Died: October 2, 1803
Occupation: Founding Father of the United States
Cite this Page: Citation

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