John Quincy Adams Short Quotes

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

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

John Quincy Adams
The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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
The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

John Quincy Adams
Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.

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
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
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
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
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
A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent...sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.

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
The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not.

John Quincy Adams
The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

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
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 told him that I thought it was law logic — an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.

John Quincy Adams
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
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