“Join or Die” quotes from John Adams

John Adams: I do not have the luxury of your birth or your purse, Sam, to spend my days fomenting dissension. I intend to prove this colony is governed by law, whatever you and your Sons of Liberty may say on the matter.

Samuel Adams: We're all Sons of Liberty here.

John Adams: [while cross-examining a witness who claims several men were carrying clubs] A lawful assembly. Not a riot, a lawful assembly in which people were carrying clubs. To make certain nothing unlawful occurred, perhaps?

Mr. Goddard: The men are rope makers, sir. As any true Boston man would know, the clubs they were carrying are for beating out rope.

John Adams: For beating out rope, indeed. But could they not also be used for beating out men's brains?

Abigail Adams: [after reviewing John's summary for the defense] John, there's not a person in Boston who doubts your education, your command of language...

John Adams: Oh, dear. You are charming me, Abigail. You never charm me unless what you're about to say is cutting.

Abigail Adams: John, vanity.

John Adams: Vain?

Abigail Adams: You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition. You do not need to quote great men to show you are one.

John Adams: Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments, that many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries even before Parliament existed. We have a right to them, derived from our Maker. Our forefathers have earned and bought liberty for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures and their blood. Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth. It stands on this principle: That the meanest and lowest of the people are, by the unalterable, indefeasible laws of God and nature, as well entitled to the benefit of the air to breathe, light to see, food to eat and clothes to wear as the nobles or the king. That is liberty. And liberty will reign in America!