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I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.

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
Farmer
Farmers
Revolutionary
Son
Poet

More quotes by John Adams

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Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
John Adams
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[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
John Adams
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This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
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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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.
John Adams
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Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
John Adams
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The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
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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The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
John Adams
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I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.
John Adams
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[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.
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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I shall have the liberty to think for myself.
John Adams
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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
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One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
John Adams
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The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation: The doctrine of a supreme, intelligent sovereign of the universe, I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
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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The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.
John Adams
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This is a revolution, damn it! We're going to have to offend somebody!
John Adams
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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