“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.”

—  John Adams

As quoted in Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784–1822 http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026646540;view=1up;seq=69 (1927), edited by Worthington C. Ford, Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 57
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John Adams 202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826

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