John Adams Quotes

What is crucial is there be laws.

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

There is no king where there is no law.

We all must follow the rule of law, not the rule of aldermen.

Many people feel that we need the rule of law to eliminate our problems. But is it more laws that we need? We have many laws - thousands upon thousands of them - but they are constantly being broken.

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative.

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

We have one authority and one law and everyone has the responsibility to follow that law and that authority.

If you're so smart, let's see you get out of the Army.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.

People must live with the laws that we make.

Good government is an empire of laws.

We have a great many chiefs and headmen but, be they ever so great, they must all abide by the laws ... These laws are not made for any person in particular but for all.

It is not your great father who does this; but the laws of the country, which he and every one of his people is bound to regard.

The trouble today is that we have too many laws.

We are ruled by public opinion, not by statute law.

The principal foundations of all states are good laws and good arms; and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms.

An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics—that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

[Each man must] have ... a sufficient musket or other serviceable peece for war ... for himself and each man servant he keeps able to bear arms.

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct faults. He who obeys them because they are just obeys a justice which is imaginary and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more.

Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it...People need somebody to watch over them.... Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.