Liberty Quotes by John Adams

I shall have the liberty to think for myself.

— John Adams

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.

— John Adams

Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.

— John Adams

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

— John Adams

Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.

— John Adams

“And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature…

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

— 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

Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty... Let us hear the dignity of his [man's] nature, and…

— John Adams

We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance…

— John Adams

I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave…

— John Adams

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights…

— John Adams

Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, and measure in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are intimately interested, are…

— John Adams

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they…

— John Adams

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there…

— John Adams

The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all…

— John Adams

Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate…

— John Adams

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or…

— John Adams

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither…

— John Adams

The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call them by what names you please, sigh and groan…

— John Adams

We may... affirm that the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way,…

— John Adams

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or…

— John Adams

It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three…

— John Adams

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a…

— John Adams

The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the…

— John Adams

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

— John Adams

We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.

— John Adams

I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.

— John Adams

The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history,…

— John Adams

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be…

— John Adams

[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the…

— John Adams