Abigail Adams Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
However kind sons may be disposed to be, they cannot be daughters to a Mother.

Abigail Adams
I can hear of the brilliant accomplishments of any of my sex with pleasure and rejoice in that liberality of sentiment which acknowledges them.

Abigail Adams
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.

Abigail Adams
I am sometimes led to think that human nature is a very perverse thing, and much more given to evil than to good.

Abigail Adams
I detest still life — and had rather be jostled, than inanimate.

Abigail Adams
Let us be just, and we shall not be miserable.

Abigail Adams
You will e'er long know that a Grandchild is almost as near to your Heart as your own children; my little Boys delight me and I should feel quite melancholy without them.

Abigail Adams
I know the voice of fame to be a mere weathercock, unstable as water and fleeting as a shadow.

Abigail Adams
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 our feet.

Abigail Adams
Heaven avert the dangers which threaten us, and as we reside in a glass House, may our politicians beware of throwing stones.

Abigail Adams
I acknowledge myself a unitarian — Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father. … There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.

Abigail Adams
Shall we be despised by foreign powers for hesitating so long at a word?

Abigail Adams
I am happy in a daughter who is both a companion and an assistant in my Family affairs and who I think has a prudence and steadiness beyond her years.

Abigail Adams
Luxury, that baneful poison, has unstrung and enfeebled her sons.

Abigail Adams
The expense of living abroad, I always supposed to be high, but my ideas were nowise adequate to the thing.

Abigail Adams
Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long.

Abigail Adams
Anticipated evils have often as much power over the mind as real ones. To guard against this imbecility of the mind an ancient Author observes 'that sufficient unto the day was the Evil thereof.'

Abigail Adams
How many have fallen, we know not. The constant roar of the cannon is so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep.... The spirit of the people are very good; the loss of Charlestown affects them no more than a drop in the bucket.

Abigail Adams
Our countrymen create most of the misfortunes they feel, for want of a disinterested spirit, a confidence in each other, and a union of the whole. It is a great misfortune, when one State thwarts the measures of eleven or twelve, and thus injures the credit and reputation of the whole.

Abigail Adams
How is it possible, that the love of gain and the lust of domination should render the human mind so callous to every principle of honor, generosity and benevolence?

Abigail Adams
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams
Publick service becomes urksome to all men of talents and to men in Years who are worn out by continual opposition and by constant exertions to support order, Harmony and peace against ambition, disorder and anarchy.

Abigail Adams
Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Abigail Adams
No Man has more of my compassion and commiseration than he who Stands upon the giddy height of the pinnacle.

Abigail Adams
I hope the rage for foreign conquest will not ever seize upon Americans.

Abigail Adams
There is nothing that enlivens us so much as having these little creatures round us —

Abigail Adams
There is something always melancholy in the Idea of leaving a place for the last time. It is like burying a Friend.

Abigail Adams