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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
Political
Render
Country
Popularity
Way
Popular
Good
Easily
Road
Advantage
Public
Politics
Extravagant

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All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
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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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Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
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Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
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Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
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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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Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.
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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.
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There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
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Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
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Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
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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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Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.
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[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.
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The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.
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The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
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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.
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Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
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I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.
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They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.
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