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This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in 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
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Religion
Secular
Best
Delusion
Would
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World
Atheist
Deism
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Agnostic
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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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Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not if honest man refuse it, others will not.
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There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.
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If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
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Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves but in none of them were they ever more successful than in the invention and establishment of the canon and the feudal law.
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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.
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The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
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He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
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[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.
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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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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.
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Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
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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 shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
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Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.
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All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.
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When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one.
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Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.
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I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!
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