I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.

— John Adams

I read my eyes out and can't read half enough...the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.

— John Adams

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

— John Adams

Knowledge in the head and virtue in the heart, time devoted to study or business, instead of show and pleasure, are the way to be useful and consequently happy.

— John Adams

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

— John Adams

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

— John Adams

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

— John Adams

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.

— John Adams

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

— John Adams

Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude, and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.

— John Adams