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Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
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
Heart
Sadness
Men
Reflection
Misery
Grief
Softens
Habit
Sharpens
Serious
Grieving
Animal
Drives
Understanding
Habits
More quotes by John Adams
Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
John Adams
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
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
Virtue is not always amiable.
John Adams
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
John Adams
I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
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
Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.
John Adams
What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.
John Adams
No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'
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
The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.
John Adams
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
John Adams
Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly.
John Adams
One sailor will do us more good than two soldiers.
John Adams
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams
In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
