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

John Quincy Adams

Inspirational, Perseverance, Cheer

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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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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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Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.

John Quincy Adams

Loyalty, Powerful, Secret

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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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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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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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Duty is ours, results are God's.

John Quincy Adams

Reality, Conservative, Results

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

John Quincy Adams

America, Liberty, Custodians

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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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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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No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.

John Quincy Adams

Book, World, Deserve

John Quincy Adams (1850). “Letters by John Quincy Adams, on the Study of the Bible”, p.119

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The natural state of mankind ... and I know that this is a controversial idea... is freedom... And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices.

John Quincy Adams

Freedom, Children, Men

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The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.

John Quincy Adams

Years, Four, Miserable

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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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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

John Quincy Adams (2017). “John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1779-1821”, p.564, Library of America

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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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Whoever tells the best story wins.

John Quincy Adams

Funny, Winning, Stories

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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 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

John Quincy Adams (1848). “Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings”, p.61

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

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