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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.

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
Dictate
Popularity
Necessary
Ought
Virtue
Wisdom
Practice
Inmost
Next
Aimed

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If the empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world but if all religion and morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained?
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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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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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It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
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Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
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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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He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.
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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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Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
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I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.
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Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
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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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But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
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I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
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Thomas Jefferson survives.
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Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.
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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.
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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
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There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind, Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
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