John Adams
Quotations

"People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity."

 

"My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."

- On the vice-presidency

 

"Thomas Jefferson survives."

- Last words - he didn't know that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.

 

"By my constitution, I am but an ordinary man. The times alone have destined me to fame-and even these have not been able to give me much."

 

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

 

"As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children. "

 

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

 

"When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more."

 

"His reputation is greater than that of Newton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, his character more revered than all of them. There's scarcely a coachman or a footman or scullery maid who does not consider him a friend of all mankind."

- On Benjamin Franklin

 

"Mr. Stuart thinks it the prerogative of genius to disdain the performance of his engagements."

- On Gilbert Stuart

 

"Would Washington have ever been commander of the revolutionary army or president of the United States if he had not married the rich widow of Mr. Custis?"

- About George Washington