• “The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire and influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.” ~John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol 1 , 1787
  

• “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ~John Adams (1770)
  

• “But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations. … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.” ~John Adams (1818)
  

• “I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.” ~John Adams, in letter to Thomas Jefferson
  

• “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ~John Adams (1770)
  

• “National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” ~John Adams (1815)
  

• “Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for Liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of Truth and a veneration of Virtue. … If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?” ~John Adams (1775)
  

• “Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for Liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of Truth and a veneration of Virtue. … If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?” ~John Adams (1775)
  

• “There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.” ~John Adams (1776)
  

• “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” ~John Adams