John Quincy Adams Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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
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
Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.

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

John Quincy Adams
My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

John Quincy Adams
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 The shout of victory has been superseded by the expulsion of the enemy over whom it could have been achieved.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
The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.

John Quincy Adams
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
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
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
I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that "except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain," with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.

John Quincy Adams
The mere title of lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of the public confidence.... The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens.

John Quincy Adams
It is so obvious to every reasonable being that he did not make himself, and the world in which he inhabits could as little make itself, that the moment we begin to exercise the power of reflection, it seems impossible to escape the conviction that there is a Creator.

John Quincy Adams
My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble away... the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively asserted and at others countenances His disciples in asserting that He was God.

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

John Quincy Adams
But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow... Like a Coach and six - the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.

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

John Quincy Adams
Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Saviour?

John Quincy Adams
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
The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.

John Quincy Adams
The Constitution had provided that all the public functionaries of the Union...should be under oath or affirmation for its support. The homage of religious faith was thus superadded to all the obligations of temporal law to give it strength.

John Quincy Adams
Human life, from the cradle to the grave, is a school. At every period of his existence man wants a teacher. His pilgrimage upon earth is but a term of childhood, in which he is to be educated for the manhood of a brighter world. As the child must be educated for manhood upon earth, so the man must be educated upon earth, for heaven; and finally that where the foundation is not laid in time, the superstructure can not rise for eternity.

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

John Quincy Adams
Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize
Man still is bound to rescue or maintain;
That nature's God commands the slave to rise,
And on the oppressor's head to break the chain.
Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round,
Till not a slave shall on this earth be found.

John Quincy Adams
[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

John Quincy Adams
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
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
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