"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"Thomas Jefferson survives."
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Source: Quoted in Susan Boylston Adams Clark, Letter to Abigail Louisa Smith Adams Johnson, 9 July 1826. In fact, Jefferson had died a few hours earlier on this, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Eliza Quincy, in her 1861 memoirs, wrote that the last words Adams spoke distinctly were Thomas Jefferson; the rest of the sentence, she noted, was inarticulate. See Jefferson 55
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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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"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."
"Always stand on principle even if you stand alone."