John Adams Quotes

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion

I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.

When I have been travelling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,-when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women,-I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.

Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.

We do not support rebellion against our rulers even if they are unjust. We do not make supplications against them and do not set any revolution against them.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating 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 set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy … greatly emancipate or fundamentally destroy.

Slavery is the cause of treason and sustains it everywhere it exists.

Coalitions are but the unjust subjection of one people to another.

Scotland will be only fit for the slaves who sold it.

We're bought and sold for English gold, such a parcel o' rogues in a nation

Our form of government is ill adapted to the responsibilities which inevitably follow permanent limitation of the independence of other peoples.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.

O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!

It was intended as a bill of coercion, to oblige the people of New England to submit to the just power of the mother country.

The good government of one man is the bad government of another

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

... the keynote of government is injustice.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

If you are not their slaves, you are rebels.

To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.