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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.

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
Happiness
Ends
Government
People
Consent
Sole
Foundation

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I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.
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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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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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Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
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The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.
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Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.
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Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.
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When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.
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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 government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.
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There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind, Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
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I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!
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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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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.
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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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I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.
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All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.
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I am quite content to come home and go to Farming, be a select Man, and owe no Man any Thing but good Will. There I can get a little health and teach my Boys to be Lawyers.
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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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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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