John Quincy Adams Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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

John Quincy Adams
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
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
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
A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.... One of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity...he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory.

John Quincy Adams
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
To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

John Quincy Adams
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
To a man of liberal education, the study of history is not only useful, and important, but altogether indispensable, and with regard to the history contained in the Bible...it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with as it is shameful to be ignorant of it.

John Quincy Adams
The harmony of the nation is promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of personal friendship formed between the representatives of its several parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.

John Quincy Adams
I appear, my fellow-citizens, in your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been called.

John Quincy Adams
Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is Later-woven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries: by the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other.

John Quincy Adams
The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but a sort of mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be foul.

John Quincy Adams
Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.

John Quincy Adams
Say not thou, My country right or wrong,
Nor shed thy blood for an unhallowed cause.

John Quincy Adams
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
This house will bear witness to his piety; this town [Braintree, Massachusetts], his birthplace, to his munificence; history to his patriotism; posterity to the depth and compass of his mind.

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

John Quincy Adams
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
Life is probation: mortal man was made
To solve the solemn problem — right or wrong.

John Quincy Adams
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
I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum [Let justice be done though heaven may perish]. My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

John Quincy Adams
My wants are many, and, if told,
Would muster many a score;
And were each wish a mint of gold,
I still would want for more.

John Quincy Adams
The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in this country than in any other I ever saw.

John Quincy Adams
In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plunder'd,
Perhaps of goose, but now and then,
From Jove's own eagle sunder'd.
But now, metallic pens disclose
Alone the poet's numbers;
In iron inspiration glows,
Or with the poet slumbers.

John Quincy Adams
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
If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled.

John Quincy Adams