John Adams Quotes

The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

We need government to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.

It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.

For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

All government is intended for the benefit of the people.

The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.

A body politic is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

That’s the function of government—to do for people what they cannot do for themselves.

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

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.

The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the same society.

The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

Our object today should be not to weaken government in competition with other centers of power, but rather to strengthen it as the agency charged with responsibility for the common good. That government is best which governs best.

Concern for individual well-being is for private citizens .... Princes, who enjoy public possessions, should be concerned with public good.

The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.

The legitimate object of government is "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.

The leader is supposed to represent the community, the public good. He's supposed to be the focal point and the guide and the inspiration, and to represent a concern for the public good. The trouble is, the tragic problem is, very often, when you are a leader and pursue the public good, it may be at the expense of your private interests in a very drastic way

Men in their private capacities may be allowed to prefer their single profit, but should consult only the general good in public councils.

Law principally and properly seeks the common good. Planning for the common good is the task of the whole people or of someone ruling in the person of the whole people. Thus lawmaking is the task of the whole charge of the whole people; for in all other matters direction toward an end is the function of him to whom the end belongs.

Liberty was realized when the citizens were ... willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community

Private interests must be made subservient to the general interests of the community

The supreme inspiration is the common weal.

It is the essence of responsibility to put the public good ahead of personal gain.