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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

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
Virtue
Something
Believe
Men
Humankind
Folly
Worse
None
Honest

More quotes by John Adams

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Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.
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When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.
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Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
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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.
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[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
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Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
John Adams
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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 Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.
John Adams
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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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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
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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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A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
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I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
John Adams
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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams
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[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.
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Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
John Adams
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If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position.
John Adams
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
John Adams