Named source · 1776

Thoughts on Government, April 1776 Quotes by John Adams: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to Thoughts on Government, April 1776 by or associated with John Adams, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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John Adams’s April 1776 Thoughts on Government

Topics and ideas

Republican government, virtue, political institutions, happiness, representation, law and the principles sustaining government.

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The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people.

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“The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people.”

John Adams

Meaning & context

Adams connects durable political institutions with the habits and motivations prevailing among the people who sustain them.

Source details

Thoughts on Government, April 1776, represented by Founders Online / National Archives. Adams develops an eighteenth-century republican theory of government grounded in public virtue; the sentence is historical political philosophy, not a modern empirical law.

John Adams’s April 1776 Thoughts on Government

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