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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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The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity
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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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As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
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I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
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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.
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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.
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In days of yore, the poet's pen From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.
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I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
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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.
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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.
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The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
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National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman, and that there is an obligation to perform such a duty absolutely irrespective of party politics or factional differences.
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Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
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You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
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A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.
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Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
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I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
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[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
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The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.
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