Abigail Adams Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

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 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.

Abigail Adams
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.

Abigail Adams
Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex.

Abigail Adams
A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?

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
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