John Adams

Second President of the United States

Declaration of Independence

"If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready. ... But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country."

"Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, and immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivities, with bonfires, and illuminations. ..."

U.S. Constitution

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Liberty

"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue."

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers."

"Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty." (Advice to his wife, in concern for their sons)

Democracy

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."