John Adams Quotes

Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.

Rulers come and go; governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives.

What is government itself but the great reflection of human nature.

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

Arab governments, at the end of the day, care most about remaining in power.

No ruler who lacks the gift of persuasion can stay in office long; it is the indispensable condition of government. It would be an idle illusion to assume that any government, no matter how good, could lastingly do without public consent.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

I think those governments who resent religion, they're afraid of religion because religion may be in their eyes, in their views be seen as a counter government or a parallel government.

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.

God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!

It is easier to run a revolution than a government.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all the passions." Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.

Politics are the divine science, after all.

Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.

I met Indira Gandhi in her office in the government palace. The same office that had been her father's - large, cold and plain. She was sitting, small and slender, behind a bare desk. When I entered, she got up and came forward to give me her hand, then sat down again and cut the preliminaries short by fixing me with a gaze that meant: Go ahead with the first question, don't waste time, I really have no time to waste.

MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government.

Forms of government matter, in my opinion. It matters how -- the nature of the government in which people live.

In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.

The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war.

To have opposition ? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

It is manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge best, by gathering many knowledges, which is reading.