Quote #25

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

More from John Adams

  1. I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. ... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
  2. I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever …
  3. My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination con…
  4. I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.
  5. There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting…
  6. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.
  7. All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want…
  8. I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fa…

All John Adams quotes