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

  884 Copy quote

• Try and fail,but don't fail to try.

  John Quincy Adams

  Inspirational, Perseverance, Cheer

  136 Copy quote

• 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

  126 Copy quote
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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.

  136 Copy quote

• To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.

  John Quincy Adams

  Believe, Honest, Folly

  10 Copy quote

• Duty is ours, results are God's.

  John Quincy Adams

  Reality, Conservative, Results

  48 Copy quote
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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.

  113 Copy quote
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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

  74 Copy quote

• Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

  John Quincy Adams

  Sweet, Idleness, Consequence

  "Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations". Book by Suzy Platt, 1992.

  18 Copy quote

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

  John Quincy Adams

  America, Liberty, Custodians

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  116 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• 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.

  68 Copy quote

• 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,

  30 Copy quote

• All that I am
  my mother made me.

  John Quincy Adams

  Mom, Daughter, Mother

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  35 Copy quote

• ...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

  131 Copy quote

• 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

  77 Copy quote

• Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.

  John Quincy Adams

  Presidential, Slavery, Unions

  John Quincy Adams (1969). “The diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845: American diplomacy, and political, social, and intellectual life, from Washington to Polk”

  21 Copy quote

• Individual liberty is individual power.

  John Quincy Adams

  Liberty, Individual Power, Presidency

  John Quincy Adams (1965). “John Quincy Adams and American continental empire: letters, papers and speeches”, Chicago, Quadrangle Books

  13 Copy quote

• The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.

  John Quincy Adams

  War, Preparation, Defense

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

  9 Copy quote

• Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.

  John Quincy Adams

  Opportunity, Temptation

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Bible, Morning, Godly

  28 Copy quote

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