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The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.

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
Liberty
Study
Secured
Rights
Englishmen
Law
Derived
History
Parliament
Would
King
Tradition
Kings

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Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.
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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.
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I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
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Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly.
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Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.
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[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.
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It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
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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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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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We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
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They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.
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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.
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Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
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The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
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Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.
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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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I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
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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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I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.
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