Samuel Adams Quotes

“Adams returned to Boston in the spring of 1781 homeless and with very little money. He had not received much of his salary from Massachusetts in years. The house that his father had purchased nearly seventy years earlier was damaged beyond salvage, the victim of British soldiers during the occupation. It was the home of his childhood memories, the dwelling in which he had raised his children.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Samuel Adams believed the nation’s founding generation fought not only for their rights but for America’s future generations. “The liberties of our country are worth defending at all hazards,” he admonished colonists. “If we should suffer them to be wrested from us, millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.”1 He believed the only security for these liberties was to create a new kind of government, free of crowns and coronets, without titles or hereditary privileges. After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams observed that “[m]onarchy seems to be generally exploded” in America.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“John was intrigued by the discussion. The vice president believed a political aristocracy eventually would come to dominate America government: “The nobles have been essential parties in the preservation of liberty whenever and wherever it has existed. In Europe they alone have preserved it against kings and people, wherever it has been preserved, or at least with very little assistance from the people.”4 In a free land, a meritocracy would allow great families to ascend in power and rank. These families eventually would compete for control and popular esteem, John believed, “for nobles there are, as I have before proved, in Boston, as well as in Madrid.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Adams had voted in favor of the constitution and had helped guide it through the state convention, his enemies viewed his earlier criticisms as evidence of his true feelings. A rock was tossed into his garden, wrapped in paper that carried an assassination threat.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“From Paris, Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Minister to France, noted that many Europeans believed America’s experiment with self-government was on the verge of collapse. A nation could not survive without the steadying hand of a king and an aristocracy. In a pure republican form of government, the masses ruled, buffeted about by passions and ignorance and a kind of national schizophrenia. In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson reported in September 1785 that foreign newspapers depicted America as ready to implode: “They supposed everything in America was anarchy, tumult, and civil war.”7”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Rather than reimburse him in cash, the legislature allowed him to buy a home confiscated from a former Tory for 92 pounds and 7 shillings of the amount owed to him. He agreed.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Samuel Adams’ last official act in Congress was to sign his approval to the Articles of Confederation, which had finally been ratified by all the states on February 24, 1781.59 He had spent four and a half years guiding it from inception to adoption and was the lone remaining member of the committee originally assigned to draft the document who still attended Congress. With his work done, he was ready to return home, never again to depart. He resigned from Congress a month after signing the Articles.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“From his earliest public writings, Samuel stated that residents should be loyal to a constitution and its laws, not to leaders. John Adams agreed. He had coined the term “a government of laws, not men,” in his 1774 Novanglus Papers, printed in Boston newspapers. The phrase was repeated in the Massachusetts Constitution and became a cornerstone of American jurisprudence.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“With matters so urgent, Congress decided to give George Washington dictatorial powers for six months to demand enlistment and seize supplies needed to maintain the war effort.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Word of the vote spread throughout town. A crowd gathered outside the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), waiting for the historic news to filter out. About midday, the Liberty Bell sounded, signaling that Congress had approved independence. The bell added resonance to the shouts of joy. When news reached New York, the statue of King George III was overturned, and decapitated. Later it was melted down to provide musket balls for the army.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Fifty-one delegates gathered in Independence Hall that day in a meeting closed to the public. Although the windows were shut to keep out the swarms of flies that pervaded the city in summer, the muffled, percussive sounds of drums, accentuated by the shouts of military commands as American troops drilled in the sultry weather were audible within the chamber.19”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“John Adams believed the declaration was a recapitulation of the Samuel Adams–authored pamphlet of 1772 for the Committees of Correspondence. George Mason wrote in the new Virginia Bill of Rights, published a month prior to the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are born and equally free and independent.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“The drive toward independence received a considerable boost in the first month of 1776 when Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was published. The pamphlet sold 120,000 copies in just 15 days. The remarkable popularity of Paine’s Common Sense came in part because Americans suffering hardships from the war wanted more than ever to break with England. Paine echoed many of the themes that Adams had written about before hostilities began, arguing that dependence on England was not in colonies’ economic interest.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“In 1765, Adams enrolled his son, aged fourteen, in Harvard College. The family hoped he would pursue a career as a doctor. Since Adams had little money, it is likely that his son’s tuition was paid for by donations from friends.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Samuel Adams’ Boston instructions also made the first public call in America for the colonies to unite in opposition to Britain through a congress.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“and counterduties. “It is the trade of the colonies that renders them beneficial to the mother country,” Adams wrote in the instructions. “Our trade, as it is now, and always has been conducted, centers in Great Britain, and in return for her manufactures affords her more ready cash, beyond any comparison, than can possibly be expected by the most sanguine promoters of these extraordinary methods.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“The principle dated back to the Magna Carta but had fallen out of the popular consciousness. Otis’ words electrified the courtroom. As John Adams put it, “Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms against writs of assistance.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Otis declared that “taxation without representation” was unconstitutional”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“No one but Samuel Adams seemed to be thinking about breaking with the British Empire in 1743.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Locke argued that all men were born with natural rights ordained by God. Men and women were given the capacity to live, make decisions, and work to better their lives by obtaining property and possessions. They were entitled to “life, liberty and property,” Locke maintained. The role of government was to protect these rights, not limit them. Locke rejected the “divine right” of kings in which subjects blindly obeyed the government.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“His parents were ecstatic; Boston’s leaders were predominately ministers and merchants. He entered Harvard in 1736, at the age of fourteen, and began to study theology.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“It is unlikely that the break with England in 1776 would have occurred without him. For this reason, this book focuses on Adams’ writings and tactics, and attempts to explain how a man with very little means except for his words and political genius could orchestrate a revolution, lay the foundations for an independent nation, and split what was then the world’s greatest empire.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Adams’ political foresight and broad understanding of political power often made him appear radical and belligerent in comparison to the caution of other colonial leaders. But Adams was not trying to change society; he was attempting to preserve rights he believed the colonists already possessed.”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

“Pitt, William: Earl of Chatham. Member”
― Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution