These Samuel Adams quotes will motivate you. Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States.
He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams. A collection of Samuel Adams sayings and Samuel Adams proverbs.
Best Samuel Adams Quotes
- “It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom – go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” ~ Samuel Adams
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“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“I firmly believe that the benevolent Creator designed the republican Form of Government for Man.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can they easily be subdued, where Knowledge is diffused and Virtue preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight, without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote…that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Nil desperandum, — Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!” ~ Samuel Adams
- “In the midst of these pleasing ideas, we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is interested in the Event: For wherever Tyranny is established, Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty…The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and Head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.” ~ Samuel Adams , Samuel Adams quotes about God
- “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “He, therefore, is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “What a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Give credit to whom credit due.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all. Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Principally, and first of all, I resign my soul to the Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying on the merits of Jesus Christ for the pardon of my sins.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Before the formation of this Constitution, it had been affirmed as a self-evident truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that ‘all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’ This declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union & has never been disannulled. May we not from hence conclude, that the doctrine of Liberty and Equality is an article in the political creed of the United States.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Let no man thirst for good beer.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently trifling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“What a glorious morning this is!” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!” ~ Samuel Adams
- “It bodes very ill for the government when men are exalted to places of high trust through their own solicitations. He only fills a place with dignity who is invited to it by his fellow citizens from the experience they have had of his adequate abilities.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” ~ Samuel Adams
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“[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “We may look up to Armies for Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honord.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control … The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” ~ Samuel Adams
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“We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “And if we now cast our eyes over the nations of the earth, we shall find that, instead of possessing the pure religion of the Gospel, they may be divided either into infidels, who deny the truth; or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition; or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth.” ~ Samuel Adams
