The world of Abigail Adams quotes! Abigail Adams was an American political figure and the wife of the second President of the United States, John Adams. Abigail was a brilliant and influential woman who was a major force behind her husband’s success. She was also a writer and an advocate for women’s rights and the rights of Americans. Her words still resonate today and she is remembered as an important and influential figure in our nation’s history. Here, we will explore some of her most memorable quotes and the stories behind them.
The Best Abigail Adams Quotes
🔴”Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.”
🔴”I begin to think, that calm is not desirable in any situation in life. The man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”
🔴”I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.”
“I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.”
🔴”I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”
🔴”Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
🔴”No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.”
🔴”The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned.”
🔴”To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.”
🔴“Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.”
🔴”A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world”
🔴”A people may let a King fall, yet still remain a people, but if a King let his people slip from him, he is no longer a King”
🔴”Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long”
🔴”I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me – to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have”
🔴”If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”
🔴”It’s never too late to get back on your feet though we won’t live forever, make sure you accomplish what you were put here for”
🔴Knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since
🔴”Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
🔴”My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
🔴”We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.”
Inspirational Abigail Adams Quotes
🔴”Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.”
🔴”If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”
🔴”Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”
Abigail Adams Quotes American – First Lady
🔴”A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.”
🔴”A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people, but if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king.”
🔴”Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.”
🔴”Danger, you know, sometimes makes timid men bold.”
“Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.”
🔴”Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.”
🔴”Great necessities call out great virtues.”
🔴”How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.”
🔴”I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give.”
🔴”I am not conscious of any harm that I have done or wished to any mortal. I bear no malice to any being. To my enemies, if any I have, I am willing to afford assistance; therefore towards man I maintain a conscience void of offense.”
🔴”I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”
🔴”I can hear of the brilliant accomplishments of any of my sex with pleasure and rejoice in that liberality of sentiment which acknowledges them.”
🔴”I cannot say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken–and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at your feet.”
🔴”I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities; but, whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion.”
🔴”I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And by the way, in the the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
🔴”I never view the ocean without being filled with ideas of the sublime, and am ready to break forth with the Psalmist, “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; in wisdom hast thou made them all.”
🔴”I think I am very brave, upon the whole. If danger comes near my dwelling, I suppose I shall shudder.”
🔴”I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me — to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”
🔴”If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”
🔴”If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.”
🔴”If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.”
🔴”Knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”
🔴”Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
🔴”Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods.”
🔴”Luxury, that baneful poison, has unstrung and enfeebled her sons.”
🔴”May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.”
🔴”Merit, not title, gave a man preeminence in our country … I did not doubt it was a mortifying circumstance to the British nobility to find themselves so often conquered by mechanics and mere husbandmen; but … we esteemed it our glory to draw such characters not only into the field, but into the Senate.”
🔴”My own inclinations must not be followed–to duty I sacrifice them.”
🔴”Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence.”
🔴”Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.”
🔴”Should I draw you the picture of my heart, it would be what I hope you still would love, though it contained nothing new. The early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have ever maintained over it, leave not the smallest space unoccupied.”
🔴”The eyes of our rulers have been closed, and a lethargy has seized almost every member. I fear a fatal security has taken possession of them. Whilst the building is in flames, they tremble at the expense of water to quench it.”
🔴”The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.”
🔴”These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”
🔴”We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
🔴”What is meat for one is not for another–no accounting for fancy.”
🔴”What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak?”
🔴”Why, my good man, thou hast the curiosity of a girl. Who could have believed, that only a slight hint would have set thy imagination agog in such a manner. And a fine encouragement I have to unravel the mystery as thou callest it. Nothing less, truly, than to be told something to my disadvantage. What an excellent reward that will be! In what court of justice didst thou learn that equity?”
🔴”Yet a cruel world too often injures my feelings, by wondering how a person, possessed of domestic attachments, can sacrifice them by absenting himself for years.”
🔴”Yet it is instructive to trace the various causes, which produced the strength of one nation, and the decline and weakness of another; to learn by what arts one man has been able to subjugate millions of his fellow creatures, the motives which have put him upon action, and the causes of his success–sometimes driven by ambition and a lust of power; at other times, swallowed up by religious enthusiasms, blind bigotry, and ignorant zeal; sometimes enervated with luxury and debauched by pleasure, until the most powerful nations have become a prey and been subdued by these Sirens, when neither the number of their enemies, nor the prowess of their arms, could conquer them.”
🔴”You have seen power in its various forms–a benign deity, when exercised in the suppression of fraud, injustice, and tyranny, but a demon, when united with unbounded ambition–a wide-wasting fury, who has destroyed her thousands. Not an age of the world but has produced characters, to which whole human hecatombs have been sacrificed.”
The Letters of John and Abigail Adams Quotes
🔴“an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
“Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken”
🔴“Before I end this letter, 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 rule under this roof. November 2, 1800.”
🔴“But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?”
🔴“Human nature with all its infirmities and deprivation is still capable of great things. It is capable of attaining to degrees of wisdom and goodness, which we have reason to believe, appear as respectable in the estimation of superior intelligences. Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing. Isaac Newton and John Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study.”
🔴“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
🔴“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
🔴“If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, and accuse me of vanity, but you I know have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the Sentiment. If much depends as is allowed upon the early Education of youth and the first principals which are instill’d take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women. ”
🔴“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”
🔴“Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.”
🔴“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.”
🔴“To be good and to do good, is all we have to do.”
🔴“You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of whom, and I had almost said every Syllable and every Letter is worth Studying.”
🔴“You tell me that you sometimes view the dark side of your Diana, and there no doubt you discover many Spots which I rather wish were erased, than conceal’d from you. Do not judge by this, that your opinion is an indifferent thing to me, (were it so, I should look forward with a heavey Heart,) but it is far otherways, for I had rather stand fair there, and be thought well of by Lysander than by the greater part of the World besides. I would fain hope that those faults which you discover, proceed more, from a wrong Head, than a bad Heart. E’er long May I be connected with a Friend from whose Example I may form a more faultless conduct, and whose benevolent mind will lead him to pardon, what he cannot amend.”
🔴“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”
Abigail Adams quotes about education and intelligence
🔴“Great learning and superior abilities…will be of little value and small estimation unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.” — Abigail Adams
“My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“These are the times in which a genius would wish to live.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure.” — Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams quotes about power
🔴“Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak?” — Abigail Adams
🔴“A people fired … with love of their country and of liberty, a zeal for the public good, and a noble emulation of glory, will not be disheartened or dispirited by a succession of unfortunate events. But like them, may we learn by defeat the power of becoming invincible.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers, and husbands.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods.” — Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams quotes about family and happiness
🔴“Heaven grant me that I may thus rejoice in my children, thus see them ornaments to their Country, and blessings to their parents.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other.” — Abigail Adams
“Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“No one is without their difficulties, whether in High, or low Life, & every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.” — Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams quotes about kindness and peace
🔴“The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“But let no person say what they would or would not do since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“We have too many high-sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“My Dear Son… remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“Great necessities call out great virtues.” — Abigail Adams
🔴“When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.” — Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams Famous Quotes Abigail Adams Important Quotes
🔴“Great necessities call out great virtues.”
🔴“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave cries, “Give, Give.”
🔴“Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.”
🔴“Remember all men would be tyrants if they could….If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
🔴“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.”
🔴“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women…If much depends as is allowed upon the early education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women.”
🔴“The Boy is a Freeman as much as any of the young Men, and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction?…I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlour and teach him both to read and write.”
🔴“I will never consent to have our sex considered an inferior point of light. Let each planet shine in their own orbit. God and nature designed it so—if man is Lord, woman is Lordess—that is what I contend for.”
🔴“What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.”
🔴“A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.”
🔴“As all Men of Delicacy and Sentiment are averse to Exercising the power they possess, yet as there is a natural propensity in Human
🔴“Nature to domination, I thought the most generous plan was to put it out of the power of the Arbitrary and Tyranick to injure us with impunity by Establishing some Laws in our favour upon just and Liberal principles.”
Verdict
Abigail Adams Quotes are a testament to her wisdom, courage, and foresight. Through her words, she has encouraged generations of women and girls to stand up for themselves and demand their rights. Her words continue to inspire and motivate us today, reminding us to always strive for a better future.