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My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
John Adams
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John Adams
Age: 90 †
Born: 1735
Born: October 19
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
2Nd U.S. President
Diplomat
Lawyer
Political Philosopher
Politician
Statesperson
Braintree
Massachusetts
President Adams
J. Adams
President John Adams
Men
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Insignificant
Invention
Office
Imagination
History
Ever
Country
Contrived
More quotes by John Adams
The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.
John Adams
The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly an aristocratic council or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.
John Adams
Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
John Adams
Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
John Adams
Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.
John Adams
I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.
John Adams
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.
John Adams
Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.
John Adams
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.
John Adams
This is my religion ... joy and exaltation in my own existence ... so go ahead and snarl ... bite ... howl, you Calvinistic divines and all you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian.
John Adams
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
John Adams
Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests in short against the gates of earth and hell.
John Adams
The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
John Adams
A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
John Adams
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
John Adams
If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
John Adams
The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
John Adams
Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.
John Adams
The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.
John Adams
Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.
John Adams
