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If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence.

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
Pride
Springs
Information
Grandeur
President
Innocence
Power
Riches
Ever
Conviction
National
Excusable
Spring
Justifiable
Glory
Benevolence

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A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
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People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
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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.
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If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
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A government of laws, and not of men.
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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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There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
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Mr. Jefferson has reason to reflect upon himself. How he will get rid of his remorse in his retirement, I know not. He must know that he leaves the government infinitely worse than he found it, and that from his own error or ignorance.
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Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
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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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My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
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Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
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Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.
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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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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation: The doctrine of a supreme, intelligent sovereign of the universe, I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
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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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If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
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He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
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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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