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Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.

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
Passion
Whale
Religion
Cords
Human
Whales
Humans
Passions
Would
Morality
Constitution
Goes
Break
Unbridled

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Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
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We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest.
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Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
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There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
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There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
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If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?
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My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!
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Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
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Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. Aristotle speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, 'that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live forasmuch as it makes exceedingly for the preservation of the present government, whatsoever it be.
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We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
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The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
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The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.
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When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.
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Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence.
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Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
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The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
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My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.
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