John Quincy Adams famous quotes

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Honesty #4th Of July #Believe

Duty is ours, results are God's.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Reality #Conservative #Results

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Patriotic #Reflection #Presidential

Whoever tells the best story wins.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Winning #Stories

I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Warrior #Son #May

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Peace #America #Independence

The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes . . . of universal application-laws essential to the existence of men in society, and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Religious #Men #Law

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....
-- John Quincy Adams

#Morning #Years #Practice

May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Country #Successful #Presidential

There is such seduction in a library of good books that I cannot resist the temptation to luxuriate in reading.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Book #Reading #Temptation

This is the last of earth! I am content.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Dying #Earth #Lasts

It is no slight testimonial, both to the merit and worth of Christianity, that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Jesus #Integrity #Son

All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Struggle #Government #Degenerates

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Practice #America #Independence

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Principles #May #Vote

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Men #Knowing #Charity

To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is ... the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Mean #Benefits #Spheres

I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Book #Men #Two

Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of a nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?  That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation?  Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth?  That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?
-- John Quincy Adams

#Government #Independence #Progress

The Bible carries with it the history of the creation, the fall and redemption of man, and discloses to him, in the infant born at Bethlehem, the Legislator and Savior of the world.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Fall #Men #Redemption

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?
-- John Quincy Adams

#History #Quests #Fields

So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Country #Children #Biblical

America is a friend of freedom everywhere, but a custodian only of our own.
-- John Quincy Adams

#America #Liberty #Custodians

Try and fail,but don't fail to try.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Inspirational #Perseverance #Cheer

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Peace #War #America

The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Positive #Kind #Life Is

My custom is to read four or five chapters of the Bible every morning immediately after rising. It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day. It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Morning #Godly #Rising

All that I am my mother made me.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Mom #Mother #Made

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Bible #God #Religious

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.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Independent #Law #People

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

I told him it was law logic-an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Law #Justice #Logic

The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Fall #Issues #Liberty

I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Country #Heaven #Causes

Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, till not a slave shall on this earth be found.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Years #Promise #Earth

Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Opportunity #Temptation

The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Years #Four #Miserable

The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.
-- John Quincy Adams

#War #Preparation #Defense

The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth. Never since the foundation of the world have the prospects of mankind been more encouraging to that hope than they appear to be at the present time. And may the associated distribution of the Bible proceed and prosper till the Lord shall have made 'bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God' (Isaiah 52:10).
-- John Quincy Adams

#Christian #Jesus #Believe

The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Want #Opulence #Saws

I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music.
-- John Quincy Adams

#War #Son #Agriculture

The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Abuse #Guarantees #Election

I want a warm and faithful friend, To cheer the adverse hour; Who ne'er to flatter will descend, Nor bend the knee to power,- A friend to chide me when I'm wrong, My inmost soul to see; And that my friendship prove as strong For him as his for me.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Friendship #Strong #Cheer

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.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Love #Men #Imagination

The attainment of knowledge is the high and exclusive attribute of man, among the numberless myriads of animated beings, inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. On him alone is bestowed, by the bounty of the Creator of the universe, the power and the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is the attribute of his nature which at once enables him to improve his condition upon earth, and to prepare him for the enjoyment of a happier existence hereafter.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Science #Men #Earth

It is essential..that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper. Unless you have such rules and principles, there will be numberless occasions on which you will have no guide for your government but your passions..It is in the Bible, you must learn them, and from the Bible how to practice them.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Bible #Passion #Government

The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God. It contains the history of the creation of the world, and of mankind.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Bible #World #Creation

The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Government #People #Insult

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.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Art #Wall #Men

Westward the star of empire takes its way.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Stars #Progress #Empires

The political system of the United States is essentially extra-European. To stand in firm and cautious independence of all entanglement in the European system has been a cardinal point of their policy under every administration of their government from the peace of 1783 to this day...Every year's experience rivets it more deeply in the principles and opinions of the nation.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Government #Years #Political

Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long, 'Tis not with me exactly so; But 'tis so in the song. My wants are many, and, if told, Would muster many a score; And were each wish a mint of gold, I still should long for more.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Song #Men #Long

Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Men #Vanity #Knowing

Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Forever #Departed #Survivor

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.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Religious #Warfare #World

The American continents, by the free and independent condition that they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation byany European powers? In the wars of the Europeanpowers inmattersrelating to ourselves, we have never taken any part; nor does it comport with our policy to do so.
-- John Quincy Adams

#War #Taken #Independent

A man's diary is a record in youth of his sentiments, in middle age of his actions, in old age of his reflections.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Reflection #Men #Age

Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union... A dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union, as now constituted, would now be certainly necessary... The Union might then be reorganized on the fundamental principle of emancipation.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Principles #Fundamentals #Slavery

Our Constitution professedly rests upon the good sense and attachment of the people. This basis, weak as it may appear, has not yet been found to fail.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Attachment #People #May

A stranger would think that the people of the United States had no other occupation than electioneering.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Thinking #People #United States

The great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community ... that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Government #Self #Community

The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to these irresistible feelings - "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Country #Heart #Thinking

We know the redemption must come. The time and the manner of its coming we know not: It may come in peace, or it may come in blood; but whether in peace or in blood, LET IT COME.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Blood #Redemption #May

There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Christian #Atheism #Spirit

However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones
-- John Quincy Adams

#Love Is #Self #Voice

In the American hemisphere the cause of freedom and independence has continued to prevail, and if signalized by none of those splendid triumphs which had crowned with glory some of the preceding years it has only been from the banishment of all external force against which the struggle had been maintained. The shout of victory has been superseded by the expulsion of the enemy over whom it could have been achieved.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Struggle #Years #Independence

To preserve, to improve, and to perpetuate the sources and to direct in their most effective channels the streams which contribute to the public weal is the purpose for which Government was instituted.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Government #Purpose #Source

The origin of the political relations between the United States and France is coeval with the first years of our independence. The memory of it is interwoven with that of our arduous struggle for national existence. Weakened as it has occasionally been since that time, it can by us never be forgotten, and we should hail with exultation the moment which should indicate a recollection equally friendly in spirit on the part of France.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Memories #Struggle #Years

So far as the object of taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion with their ability of bearing it without oppression.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Hands #Community #Taxation

I want the seals of power and place, the ensigns of command, charged by the people's unbought grace, to rule my native land. Nor crown, nor scepter would I ask but from my country's will, by day, by night, to ply the task her cup of bliss to fill.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Country #Night #Land

The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Fall #Men #Omnipotence

Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Powerful #Charity #Moral

There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence which in times of contention for principle was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Party #Passion #Sacrifice

When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Real #Weakness #Obscurity

Of all persecuted sects, the Baptists stand forth as most prominent, simply and only because they aim at a more complete and thorough reform than any others ever attempted. They teach that Christ's kingdom is not of this world; that the church is not a national, political, or provincial establishment; but a congregation of holy men, separated from the world by the receiving of the Holy Spirit.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Men #Political #Church

The great interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause of prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to the others. All these interests are alike under the protecting power of the legislative authority, and the duties of the representative bodies are to conciliate them in harmony together.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Together #Body #Unions

The freedom of the press should be inviolate.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Printing #Should #Freedom Of The Press

Life is a problem; mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem right or wrong.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Life #Men #Problem

About one-half of the members of Congress are seekers for office at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one-half have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Office #President #Half

And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of order, the Fountain of justice, and the Protector, in all ages of the world, of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its government, and give it all possible success and duration, consistent with the ends of His providence.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Blessing #Government #Order