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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
None
Honest
Virtue
Something
Believe
Men
Humankind
Folly
Worse

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Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not if honest man refuse it, others will not.
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I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
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A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
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There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
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Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.
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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.
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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
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Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.
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As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him.
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As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
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You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
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One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
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Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. Aristotle speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, 'that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live forasmuch as it makes exceedingly for the preservation of the present government, whatsoever it be.
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A government of laws, and not of men.
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I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.
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There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
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I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
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Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
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