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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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
Weakness
Politics
Rather
Unfit
Power
Renders
Men
Wickedness
Unlimited
Trusted
Presidential
More quotes by John Adams
I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame
John Adams
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.
John Adams
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
John Adams
Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact.
John Adams
I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
John Adams
Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.
John Adams
I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800'.
John Adams
If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
John Adams
During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.
John Adams
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?
John Adams
Ideology is the science of idiots.
John Adams
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
John Adams
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
John Adams
Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence
John Adams