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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.

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
Doe
Laws
Done
Meaning
Satisfactory
Would
Seem
Permits
Liberty
Permit
Law
Definition
Whatever
Define
Seems
Definitions
Power
Civil

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Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
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Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
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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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I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
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Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
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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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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
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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.
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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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They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
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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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Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
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I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
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But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six-the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
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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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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.
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All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
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The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
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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.
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