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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.

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
Government
Truly
Scales
Pretensions
Human
Equal
Productive
Pretension
Humans
Virtue
Latter
Consequently
Liberty
Excellence
Rank
Support
Former
Frame
Moral
Indeed
Scale
Happiness
Sacred
Holds
Part
Honor
Lower

More quotes by John Adams

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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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I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.
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I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.
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The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.
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The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
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Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
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Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
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Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
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Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude. I am therefore utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territory, and heartily wish that every Constitutional measure may be adopted for the preservation of it.
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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.
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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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Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.
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The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity
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Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
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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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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.
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The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.
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Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
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I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
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