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If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
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
Advantage
Public
Politics
Extravagant
Political
Render
Country
Popularity
Way
Popular
Good
Easily
Road
More quotes by John Adams
I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.
John Adams
Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.
John Adams
As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
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Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
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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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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
Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
John Adams
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
A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.
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One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
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Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
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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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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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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
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It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
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I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits... Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum.
John Adams
The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.
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I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
John Adams
America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.
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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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