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A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.
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
Instrument
Presidential
Excellent
Instruments
Ambition
Certainly
Attention
Inflame
Men
Pens
More quotes by John Adams
Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
John Adams
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
The die is cast. The people have passed the river and cut away the bridge. Last night three cargoes of tea were emptied into the harbor. This is the grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened.
John Adams
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
Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education...to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher.
John Adams
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
John Adams
If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?
John Adams
They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
John Adams
The idea of infidelity [a disbelief in the inspiration of the Scriptures or the divine origin of Christianity] cannot be treated with too much resentment or too much horror. The man who can think of it with patience is a traitor in his heart and ought to be execrated [denounced] as one who adds the deepest hypocrisy to the blackest treason.
John Adams
The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.
John Adams
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman, and that there is an obligation to perform such a duty absolutely irrespective of party politics or factional differences.
John Adams
I consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for public service.
John Adams
There's no such thing as a free lunch, unless you have a coupon for a free lunch...or someone gives you a lunch...never mind.
John Adams
Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
John Adams
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.
John Adams
I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.
John Adams
To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
John Adams
