John Quincy Adams Quotes

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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

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...he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind...The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.

John Quincy Adams

War, Islam, Muhammad

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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, Political Will

"American Prohibition Year Book, Volumes 10-12" (p. 111), 1910.

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Try and fail,but don't fail to try.

John Quincy Adams

Inspirational, Perseverance, Cheer

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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

Life, Book, Men

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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

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There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

John Quincy Adams

Wise, Men, Sharks

Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1848). “Letters of Mrs. Adams: The Wife of John Adams”, p.432, Boston, Wilkins, Carter,

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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Quincy Adams

Religious, Business, 4th Of July

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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

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Find a mission that you can give yourself over to and then spend your days moving that mission forward. Man is made so that when anything fires his soul the impossibilities vanish. The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.

John Quincy Adams

Moving, Men, Fire

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America is a friend of freedom everywhere, but a custodian only of our own.

John Quincy Adams

America, Liberty, Custodians

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Let us not be unmindful that liberty is power, that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth. 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. Always vote for a principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost. America, in the assembly of nations, has uniformly spoken among them the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights.

John Quincy Adams

Sweet, Powerful, Blessed

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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

"John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary". Book by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason, 2016.

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We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.

John Quincy Adams

Understanding, Who We Are, Embrace

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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

Letter to an autograph collector from Washington on April 27, 1837, The Historical Magazine, archive.org. July 1860.

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From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

John Quincy Adams

Past, Experience, Lessons

John Quincy Adams, Kenneth V. Jones, United States. President (1825-1829 : Adams) (1970). “John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”, Oceana Pubns

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Whoever tells the best story wins.

John Quincy Adams

Funny, Winning, Stories

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I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring ... a conspiracy of the few against the equal rights of the many ...Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.

John Quincy Adams

Believe, Rights, Order

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The Sermon on the Mount commands me to lay up for myself treasures, not upon earth, but in Heaven. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ.

John Quincy Adams

Heaven, Treasure, Earth

John Quincy Adams (1968). “Writings of John Quincey Adams”

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America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.

John Quincy Adams

War, Ambition, Color

Speech on Independence Day at the United States House of Representatives, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 04, 1821.

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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

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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.

John Quincy Adams

Independent, Law, People

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The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.

John Quincy Adams

Art, Zero, Yankees

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Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions.

John Quincy Adams

Perseverance, Strong, Passion

John Quincy Adams (1802). “An Oration, delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1802, at the anniversary commemoration of the first landing of our ancestors at that place”, p.13

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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

Speech on Independence Day at Newburyport, MA, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 04, 1837.

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Born: July 11, 1767
Died: February 28, 1848
Occupation: 6th U.S. President
Cite this Page: Citation

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