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To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.

John Quincy Adams

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John Quincy Adams
Age: 80 †
Born: 1767
Born: July 11
Died: 1848
Died: February 23
6Th U.S. President
Diarist
Diplomat
Lawyer
Politician
Statesperson
Braintree
Massachusetts
John Q. Adams
President Adams
John Adams
J. Q. Adams
J. Adams
JQA
Everyone
Believe
Folly
Worse
Honest

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From the day of the Declaration...they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.
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Religious discord has lost her sting the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the field of politics supplies the alchymists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction.
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Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.
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The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.
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I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.
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All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
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What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the fields and vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness?
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I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement battered by the winds and broken in on by the storms, and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.
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May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
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The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy.
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Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.
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But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow... Like a Coach and six - the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
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Let us consider an alternative style of thinking, which we can call 'creative thinking.' It is playfully instructive to note that the word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters. The only difference between the two is that you 'C' [see] differently.
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This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe, For Freedom only deals the deadly blow Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade, For gentle peace in Freedom's hallowed shade.
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I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once ever year.... My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. I employs about an hour of my time.
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It is by a thorough knowledge of the whole subject that [people] are enabled to judge correctly of the past and to give a proper direction to the future.
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A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent...sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.
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Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize Man still is bound to rescue or maintain That nature's God commands the slave to rise, And on the oppressor's head to break the chain. Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, Till not a slave shall on this earth by found.
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Where annual elections end where slavery begins.
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I say women exhibit the most exalted virtue when they depart from the domestic circle and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their G-d!
John Quincy Adams