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Abigail Adams Quotes
1744–1818 United States
Abigail Smith Adams (November 11, 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and is retrospectively perceived as the second First Lady of the United States; the term was not coined until after she had died. She was also the mother of John Quincy Adams.
United States Feminists Unitarians Also known as: Adams, Abigail
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28 quotes
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
Do not put such unlimited powers in the hands of the husband, Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.
If you complain of neglect of Education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it?
You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.
Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.
I long to hear that you have declared an independency.
A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs, which treat us only as the vessels of your sex
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
Letter to John Adams (1774)
To be good, and to do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.
Letter to Elizabeth Shaw (1784)
Shall we be despised by foreign powers for hesitating so long at a word?
Luxury, that baneful poison, has unstrung and enfeebled her sons.
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, “Give, give!”
Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.
Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long.
Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.
I regret the narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.
Knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severly for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.
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.
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