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.

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.

I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

Well, 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.

Great necessities call out great virtues.

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.

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

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

He who is the most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power is as eager after for the prerogatives of government.

I most sincerely wish there was not a slave in the province. It has always seemed 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.

I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.

I seldom meet with characters so inoffensive as my hens and chickings, or minds so well improved as my garden.

If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subject than others of your standing, reflect that have had greater opportunity …

Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard under pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their imaginations.

It is a very great misfortune that persons employed in the most important Departments should ... have separate interests from the publick whom they profess to serve.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

May the foundation of our new constitution be justice, Truth and Righteousness.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

Power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, "Give, give!

The liberal mind regards not what nation or climate it springs up in, nor what color or complexion the man is of.

I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creature of theirs.

I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.... 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.