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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.

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
Assuming
Refinement
Wells
Individuals
Affliction
Well
Blessing
Produces
Every
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Augmentation
Individual
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Furnace
Part
Governments
Furnaces
States
Vices
Purification

More quotes by John Adams

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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.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.
John Adams
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Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
John Adams
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As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
John Adams
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Virtue is not always amiable.
John Adams
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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
John Adams
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In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.
John Adams
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Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
John Adams
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My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
John Adams
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I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800'.
John Adams
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They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
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Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.
John Adams
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We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
John Adams
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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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If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
John Adams