Quotations from Abigail Adams, 1744-1818
- In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable 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. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.
Letter to John Adams [March 31, 1776]
- Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken -- and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.
Letter to John Adams [May 7, 1776]
- Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.
Letter to John Adams [August 5, 1776]
- If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women....If much depends as is allowed upon the early education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women.
Letter to John Adams [August 14, 1776]
- It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to・Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.
Letter to John Thaxter [February 15, 1778]
- I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.
Letter to John Adams [June 30, 1778]
- If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
Letter to John Thaxter [September 29, 1778]
- Luxury, that baneful poison, has unstrung and enfeebled her sons.
Letter to John Adams [February 13, 1779]
- These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great challenges are formed.....Great necessities call out great virtues.
Letter to John Quincy Adams [January 19, 1780]
- Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
Letter to John Quincy Adams [May 8, 1780]
- Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.
Letter to John Adams [June 17, 1782]
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