Abigail Adams wrote these words, almost word for word, in a letter to her relative John Thaxter. She sent it from Braintree on 29 September 1778 and signed it “Portia.” The letter is printed in the Adams Papers (Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 3, pp. 98–99). No source ties the line to her husband.
“If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?” Abigail Adams, letter to John Thaxter, Braintree, 29 September 1778 (often misattributed to John Adams) · Verbatim: “It is true says one that Mankind in general are a worthless and ungratefull set of Beings for a Man to wear out himself in serving but if we do not lay out ourselves in the Service of mankind whom should we serve?”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John Adams. Use the credit shown above instead.
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Provenance
The 1778 letter
Work
Abigail Adams to John Thaxter
Written
Braintree, Massachusetts, 29 September 1778 (signed “Portia”)
Published in
Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 3, ed. L. H. Butterfield and Marc Friedlaender (Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 98–99
Manuscript
Recipient’s copy, addressed “To Mr. John Thaxter Philadelphia”
It is true says one that Mankind in general are a worthless and ungratefull set of Beings for a Man to wear out himself in serving but if we do not lay out ourselves in the Service of mankind whom should we serve? Our own insignificant selves that would be sordid indeed. Thus I hush all my murmurs by considering we are all embarked upon the same bottom, and if our Country sinks we must sink with it.
Original spelling, as printed in the Adams Papers
The popular version is this sentence from “if” onward. It starts with a capital “If” and puts “Service” in lower case, but the words themselves are Abigail’s. She puts the cynical view in the mouth of an unnamed “one” and offers the question as her answer to it.
The full text of the letter, with its editorial notes, is in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Papers Digital Edition ↗. It is dated “Braintree Sepbr. 29 1778” and signed “Portia.”
Founders Online (National Archives) gives the printed source as Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 3 (Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 98–99. See the archived Founders Online page ↗.
Wikiquote’s John Adams page ↗ lists the line under “Misattributed” and credits it to Abigail Adams, letter to John Thaxter (1778-09-29).
Check Your Fact (23 Aug 2019) ↗ checked a Facebook post that credited John Adams. Its verdict was False: the words come from Abigail Adams’s 1778 letter to Thaxter.
Abigail Adams wrote the line in a manuscript letter in 1778. The earliest printing we could confirm is Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 3 (Harvard University Press, 1973), a publication from after 1931. The Massachusetts Historical Society asserts copyright ↗ in that edition’s annotations and modern editorial content. We found no printing before 1931, so we do not call the text public domain.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How it became John’s
The surnames match and the letter dates from the Revolution, so John Adams gets the credit. In fact the line is Abigail’s, written while her husband was away in public service.
✕
Social media & quote sitesJohn Adams Wrong Adams
Check Your Fact ↗ found no similar or matching phrase in John Adams’s writings and traced the words to Abigail’s 1778 letter to Thaxter. Wikiquote’s John Adams page ↗ lists the line as misattributed.
✓Abigail Adams wrote it in her letter to John Thaxter from Braintree, 29 September 1778, signed “Portia.” Read the letter in the Adams Papers ↗.
Context
A wartime grumble, answered
The letter is less a hymn to service than a complaint she talks herself out of. Abigail tells Thaxter that people at home are “more extravagant, selfish, oppressive than we were last year.” She writes that it “cost me as much to live one month as it used to in a year,” and that she cannot do certain work herself because “they have placed my Husband in a Station that must not be so disgraced.”
She then quotes a cynic, “one” who says mankind is “a worthless and ungratefull set of Beings” to wear oneself out serving, and answers with the famous question. The only other choice, she writes, is “Our own insignificant selves that would be sordid indeed.”
Thus I hush all my murmurs by considering we are all embarked upon the same bottom.
Wording and spelling
The Adams Papers keep Abigail’s own spelling and capitals (“ungratefull,” “Service of mankind”). The quote as it circulates today is a faithful excerpt. It drops the “but” that opens her answer and modernizes the capitals.
The edition’s notes identify Thaxter’s mother, Anna (Quincy) Thaxter, as Abigail’s aunt. The letter is addressed to him at Philadelphia.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1744–1818 · First Lady of the United States & letter writer
Abigail Adams (born Abigail Smith) was the wife and closest adviser of John Adams, the second U.S. president, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth. She wrote a great many letters, often signed with the pen name Portia. They are among the richest records of the Revolutionary era, and the Massachusetts Historical Society publishes them in the Adams Papers.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Abigail Adams to John Thaxter, Braintree, 29 September 1778, in Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 3, April 1778–September 1780, ed. L. H. Butterfield and Marc Friedlaender (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 98–99.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-we-do-not-lay-out-ourselves-in-the-service-of-mankind/