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The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
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
People
Liberty
Keepers
Worst
Proposition
Political
Liberties
True
Propositions
Body
Patriotic
Best
Judge
Think
Judging
Thinking
Neither
Conceivable
More quotes by John Adams
If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence.
John Adams
He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
John Adams
People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
John Adams
[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
John Adams
Power must never be trusted without a check.
John Adams
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
John Adams
As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
John Adams
America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
John Adams
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
John Adams
In politics the middle way is none at all.
John Adams
Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
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
You are apprehensive of monarchy I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.
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
