You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of...

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

Genius is sorrow’s child.

The most important gap is that a whole host of disorders, called blood disorders, have been forgotten and omitted.

Those who attend to small expenses are always rich

I am a revolutionary so my son can be a farmer so his son can be a poet.

Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them.

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

All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals

But I fear that in every assembly members will obtain an influence by noise rather than sense, by meanness rather than greatness, and by ignorance and not learning, by contracted hearts and not large souls....

The national defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman

To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me that infinite benevolence, wisdom, and power, created, and preserves for a time innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever, for his own glory? Wretch!...

That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world

The question before the human race is whether the God of nature shall govern the world by His own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination – everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.

The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion

It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea that there can be property in man

The point is made we’re still fighting this battle. It’s not as dynamic a battle as people being hosed down … but it’s still happening.

We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence,...

A government of laws, and not of men.

It is essential…that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper. Unless you have such rules and principles, there will be numberless occasions on which...

It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore,

Keeping an army in America has been nothing but a public nuisance

Be it remembered, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we have not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us...

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by...

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.

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

I made the four minutes of the prelude entirely with the sound of hand-tools. At one point it sounds to me like you’re inside an electron accelerator. And I’ve used recordings made by US Marines...

Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.

Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven...

Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends...

Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power

That’s what they admire most about the horse, his durability.

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all...

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

Where annual elections end, there slavery begins

Inequalities of mind and body are so established by God Almighty, in his constitution of human nature, that no art or policy can ever plane them down to a level

A government of laws and not of men

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag’d to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their...

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual reproaches their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and defiance, their dismal and prophecies, are all delusion

Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence