John Adams Quotes about Ambition

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It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness,

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

John Adams

Children, Ambition, Compassion

John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.74, Penguin

Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.

John Adams

Passion, Heart, Ambition

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

John Adams

Ambition, Office, Revolution

Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

John Adams

Ambition, Intellectual, Fields

I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame

John Adams

Jealousy, Ambition, Envy

John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.593

A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

John Adams

Ambition, Men, Presidential

Diary and Autobiography, 14 Nov. 1760

A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.

John Adams

Ambition, Government, People

John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.158, Jazzybee Verlag

There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.

John Adams

Ambition, People, President

John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.583