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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.

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
Care
Balance
Multitude
Government
Cases
Estate
Take
Virtue
Estates
Real
Liberty
Multitudes
Economy
Liberalism
Politics
Possessed
Interest
Acts
Power
Case

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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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I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame
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As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
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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.
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The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.
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There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.
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To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
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The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.
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Riches attract attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.
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When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
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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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Ideology is the science of idiots.
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We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
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No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'
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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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Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.
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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
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Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
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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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