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Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
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
Human
Confine
Humans
Superstition
Must
Superstitions
Mind
Loose
Humankind
Virtue
Education
Cannot
Dogmatism
More quotes by John Adams
I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
John Adams
It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
John Adams
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
John Adams
I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame
John Adams
If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence.
John Adams
Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
John Adams
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
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My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!
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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
I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
John Adams
Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence
John Adams
There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.
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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
They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.
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Power must never be trusted without a check.
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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
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
John Adams
No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'
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The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
John Adams