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Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.

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
Government
Ungovernable
Human
Uncontrollable
Insatiable
Humans
Passions
Heart
Ambition
Love
Passion
Politics
Power

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If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.
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The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.
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I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
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Virtue is not always amiable.
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They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
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All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
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The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.
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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
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[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
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Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
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Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
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Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
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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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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
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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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The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
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The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.
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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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