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Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.

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
Even
Always
Humankind
Principle
Principles
Stand
Virtue
Alone
Politics

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It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.
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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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Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
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A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
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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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Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
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While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
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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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The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
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Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
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In politics the middle way is none at all.
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What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?
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Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.
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Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude. I am therefore utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territory, and heartily wish that every Constitutional measure may be adopted for the preservation of it.
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Virtue is not always amiable.
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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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They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
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The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
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Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.
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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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