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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

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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
Understanding
Quarrel
Individual
Factions
Every
Quarrels
Would
Pens
Parties
Tongue
Either
Subjugate
Party
Prostitute

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The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly an aristocratic council or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.
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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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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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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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There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
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Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
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Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.
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The only way to form an army to be confided in, was a systematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.
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Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.
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Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
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Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
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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?
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We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
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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.
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Virtue is not always amiable.
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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
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Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
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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.
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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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