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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.

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
Begins
Whenever
Track
Roots
Serious
Loses
Art
Vernacular
Atrophy

More quotes by John Adams

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[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
John Adams
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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.
John Adams
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Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.
John Adams
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Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
John Adams
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If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position.
John Adams
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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
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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?
John Adams
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Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
John Adams
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During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.
John Adams
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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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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
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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.
John Adams
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Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
John Adams
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Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
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Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
John Adams
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They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.
John Adams
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Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
John Adams
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I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!
John Adams
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Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude. I am therefore utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territory, and heartily wish that every Constitutional measure may be adopted for the preservation of it.
John Adams
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When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one.
John Adams