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Virtue is not always amiable.

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
Always
Amiable
Humankind
Virtue

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Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
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Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
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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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Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
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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.
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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
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The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
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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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One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
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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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[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
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When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
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I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
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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.
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[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
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God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
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The destiny of America is to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.
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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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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.
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During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.
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