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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.

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
Life
Slavery
Abhorrence
Therefore
Eventual
Ought
Assumed
Practice
Prudence
United
Throughout
States
Total
Whole
Measure
Every
Held

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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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I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
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While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
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Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
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We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.
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Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.
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Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
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Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
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Power must never be trusted without a check.
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Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
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The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
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It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up, at such a season as the present.
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[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
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My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone!
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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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There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.
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If the empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world but if all religion and morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained?
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A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.
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There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.
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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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