John Adams Zitate
seite 6

John Adams war einer der Gründerväter der Vereinigten Staaten und von 1789 bis 1797 der erste Vizepräsident sowie nach George Washington von 1797 bis 1801 der zweite Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten.

Adams entstammte einem puritanischen Elternhaus und erlernte nach einem Studium am Harvard College den Anwaltsberuf. In Boston kam er während der frühen Amerikanischen Revolution in Kontakt mit Samuel Adams und den Sons of Liberty. Anfangs noch loyal zur britischen Verfassung stehend, näherte er sich den nach einer Loslösung vom Mutterland strebenden Kolonisten zunehmend an. Als Mitglied des Kontinentalkongresses von 1774 bis 1778 trieb er die Unabhängigkeit der Dreizehn Kolonien vom Königreich Großbritannien voran. Zusammen mit Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin und anderen war er an der Konzeption der Unabhängigkeitserklärung der Vereinigten Staaten beteiligt.

Zwischen zwei diplomatischen Missionen im Königreich Frankreich arbeitete Adams in der Heimat die Verfassung von Massachusetts aus. Danach führte er in Europa Verhandlungen mit dem Königreich Großbritannien, die im Jahr 1783 in den Frieden von Paris mündeten. Anschließend war Adams als Repräsentant für die junge Republik in unterschiedlichen Staaten tätig und ab 1785 erster Botschafter Amerikas in London.

Bei der ersten amerikanischen Präsidentschaftswahl im Jahr 1789 wurde Adams als Zweitplatzierter im Electoral College Vizepräsident unter George Washington. Bei den Wahlen 1792 konnte er dieses Amt gegen George Clinton verteidigen. Im entstehenden First Party System gehörte Adams zu den wichtigsten Vertretern der Föderalistischen Partei. Als deren Kandidat besiegte er bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen im Jahr 1796 knapp Thomas Jefferson von der Demokratisch-Republikanischen Partei. Die Amtszeit von Adams wurde vom Quasi-Krieg mit dem revolutionären Frankreich und den Intrigen von Jefferson und Alexander Hamilton gegen ihn überschattet. Die bedeutsamste Gesetzgebung seiner Präsidentschaft waren die Alien and Sedition Acts. In einem stark polarisierenden Wahlkampf unterlag Adams 1800 Jefferson. Er zog sich danach ins Privatleben zurück und erlebte noch kurz vor seinem Lebensende, wie sein ältester Sohn John Quincy Adams im Jahr 1824 zum Präsidenten gewählt wurde. Wikipedia  

✵ 30. Oktober 1735 – 4. Juli 1826
John Adams Foto
John Adams: 202   Zitate 0   Gefällt mir

John Adams: Zitate auf Englisch

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), "The Works of John Adams" http://books.google.com/books?id=j9NKAAAAYAAJ&dq=John%20Adams%20works&pg=PA511#v=onepage&q&f=false, vol 9, p. 511
1780s

“You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (15 July 1813)
1810s

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken, and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.”

Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull http://books.google.com/books?id=E2kFAAAAQAAJ&dq=editions%3AVsZcW99fWPgC&pg=PA265#v=onepage&q&f=false (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. There are some differences in the version that appeared in The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1854), vol. 9, pp. 228-9 http://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false, most notably the words "or gallantry" instead of "and licentiousness".
1790s

“There is one Resolution I will not omit. Resolved that no Slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies.”

Autobiography (1802–1807), passage on events of April 6, 1776, The Founding Fathers: John Adams: A Biography in his own Words https://web.archive.org/web/20111029143754/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps2.htm (1973), by James Bishop Peabody, Newsweek, New York, p. 197
1800s

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones:
Misattributed

“The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in His truth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost … There is no authority civil or religious: There can be no legitimate government but what is administered by the Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation.”

Adams as misquoted by David Barton on Glenn Beck (Fox News) on , shown in the film The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers (2010), at 2:21:32. Without the ellipses and substituted words, this section of Adams's letter of (21 December 1809) http://books.google.com/books?id=84oTAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA248 reads:
But <span style="color:gray">my Friend there is something very serious in this Business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in</span> this earth. <span style="color:gray">Not a Baptism, not a Marriage not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishops on the heads of Candidates for the Ministry.</span> In the same manner as the holy Ghost is transmitted from Monarch to Monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a Dove and by that other Phyal which I have seen in the Tower of London. <span style="color:gray">There is no Authority civil or religious: there can be no legitimate Government but what is administered by</span> this <span style="color:gray">Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All, without it is Rebellion and Perdition, or in more orthodox words Damnation.</span> Although this is all Artifice and Cunning in the secret original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their Lives under the Ax or the fiery Fagot for it. Alas the poor weak ignorant Dupe human Nature. There is so much King Craft, Priest Craft, Gentlemens Craft, Peoples Craft, Doctors Craft, Lawyers Craft, Merchants Craft, Tradesmens Craft, Labourers Craft and Devils Craft in the world, that it seems a desperate and impracticable Project to undeceive it.
Do you wonder that Voltaire and Paine have made Proselytes? Yet there was as much subtlety, Craft and Hypocrisy in Voltaire and Paine and more too than in Ignatius Loyola.
This Letter is so much in the tone of my Friend the Abby Raynal and the Grumblers of the last age, that I pray you to burn it. I cannot copy it.
<span style="color:gray">Your Prophecy my dear Friend has not become History as yet. I have no Resentment or Animosity against the Gentleman and abhor the Idea of blackening his Character or transmitting him in odious Colours to Posterity.
But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many Correspondences. If I should receive a Letter from him however I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.</span>
Misattributed

“What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?”

1790s, Inaugural Address (Saturday, March 4, 1797)

“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

On the White House, in a letter to Abigail Adams (2 November 1800)
Franklin D. Roosevelt had this inscribed on the mantlepiece of the State Dining Room
1800s

“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i. e. all the Glory of it.”

Letter to Benjamin Rush (21 June 1811); published in Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (1892), p. 287 http://books.google.com/books?id=5d8hAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22Jefferson+ran+away+with+all+the+stage+effect+of+that%22; also quoted in TIME magazine (25 October 1943) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796192-2,00.html
1810s

“A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest, as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.”

"Discourses on Davila: A Series of Papers on Political History," No. 4 Gazette of the United States (1790–1791)
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)

“Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.”

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (3 December 1813), published in Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 (UNC Press, 1988), p. 404
1810s

“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.”

As quoted in Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784–1822 http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026646540;view=1up;seq=69 (1927), edited by Worthington C. Ford, Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 57
Attributed

“[N]o pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Treaty with the bey of Tunis https://web.archive.org/web/20150712204904/http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2013/11/20131104285694.html#axzz3sjER1BV1 (1797).
1790s

“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.”

James Truslow Adams; sometimes rendered : "There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live".
Misattributed

“Although neither nation has been brought to admit that they were chargeable with the first infraction, yet no American can forget the carrying off the negroes.”

Letter to T. Pickering (7 December 1799), Philadelphia. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2107#lf1431-09_head_047
1790s

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”

Letter to Benjamin Rush (18 April 1808)
1800s

Ähnliche Autoren

Thomas Jefferson Foto
Thomas Jefferson 52
dritter amerikanische Präsident
George Washington Foto
George Washington 52
erster Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Foto
Richard Brinsley Sheridan 4
irischer Dramatiker und Politiker
Edmund Burke Foto
Edmund Burke 13
Schriftsteller, Staatsphilosoph und Politiker
Joseph Addison Foto
Joseph Addison 7
englischer Dichter, Politiker und Journalist
Benjamin Franklin Foto
Benjamin Franklin 99
amerikanischer Drucker, Verleger, Schriftsteller, Naturwiss…
Michel De Montaigne Foto
Michel De Montaigne 56
französischer Philosoph und Autor
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Foto
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi 20
Schweizer Pädagoge
Thomas Morus Foto
Thomas Morus 13
Lordkanzler von England unter König Heinrich VIII. und huma…
Niccolo Machiavelli Foto
Niccolo Machiavelli 52
florentinischer Politiker und Diplomat