Top 100 Quincy Adams Quotes
#1. The world shall retire from me before I shall retire from the world. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#2. The historian must have no country. - JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
James W. Loewen
#3. John Quincy Adams resolved to the discipline of rejecting argument for argument's sake would he sees that a fellow cabinet member is trying to draw him in to debating proposals the president will already reject.
Paul C. Nagel
#4. Our religion was the religion of a Book. Man must be educated on Earth for Heaven. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#5. John Quincy Adams' depression was treated by his aunt with some reliable remedies, first sleep and then compassion. She said, " He was half cared for by having someone to care for him.
Paul C. Nagel
#6. I was born for a controversial world, and I cannot escape my destiny. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#7. When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of "littleness of soul".
Paul C. Nagel
#8. I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-guard publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks.
A. J. Jacobs
#9. I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say?
Raquel Welch
#10. My countenance in my old-age does injustice to my heart. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#11. John Quincy Adams strove to escape commonplace thoughts.
Paul C. Nagel
#12. Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
{Letter to his son and 6th US president, John Quincy Adams, November 13 1816}
John Adams
#13. Rather than pound or a national mind that he believed had been closed by his critics, John Quincy Adams decided to seek a place in the is the esteem of future generations.
Paul C. Nagel
#14. John Quincy Adams, denying his sons permission to come home for college holidays for under-performance: "I would feel nothing but sorrow and shame at your presence.
Paul C. Nagel
#15. The life-changing encounters that John Quincy Adams made as an adolescent on his own in Stockholm began with a friendship he struck up at a bookstore.
Paul C. Nagel
#16. No sermon I have heard or read touched my heart with half the force of this puppet show. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#17. John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy, but he was actively involved.
Michele Bachmann
#18. Ambition distorts even memory itself. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#19. All that I am my mother made me. - John Quincy Adams. Children and mothers never truly part ...
Charlotte Gray
#20. I carry too much of the week into the Sabbath , and too little of the Sabbath into the week. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#21. It is the doom of the Christian church to be always distracted with controversy. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#22. The young John Quincy Adams begins it lifelong habit of keeping a journal with reluctance that he might one day have to read it. He hopes, though, that the flaws in his earlier entries will be balanced by the progress he is able to see.
Paul C. Nagel
#23. Most ardent reformers are accompanied by but equal portion of dullness . John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
#24. American secretaries of state have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality.
Thomas Mallon
#25. Government has no right to hurt a hair on the head of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.
{Letter to his son and future president, John Quincy Adams, 16 June 1816}
John Adams
#26. For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.)
Jon Meacham
#27. 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
#28. A stranger would think that the people of the United States had no other occupation than electioneering.
John Quincy Adams
#29. His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with gall; his tongue drips poison.
John Quincy Adams
#30. The law is an artificial human construct, quite arbitrary, and of absolutely no use anywhere else but in a court of law!
John Quincy Adams
#31. I say women exhibit the most exalted virtue when they depart from the domestic circle and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their G-d!
John Quincy Adams
#33. I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once ever year ... My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. I employs about an hour of my time ...
John Quincy Adams
#34. The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.
John Quincy Adams
#35. 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
#36. Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done.
John Quincy Adams
#37. We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.
John Quincy Adams
#38. The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.
John Quincy Adams
#39. 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
#42. Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.
John Quincy Adams
#43. 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
#45. 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
#46. The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.
John Quincy Adams
#47. Life is a problem; mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem right or wrong.
John Quincy Adams
#48. 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
#49. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws.
John Quincy Adams
#50. A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
John Quincy Adams
#51. We know the redemption must come. The time and the manner of its coming we know not: It may come in peace, or it may come in blood; but whether in peace or in blood, LET IT COME.
John Quincy Adams
#52. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.
John Quincy Adams
#53. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
John Quincy Adams
#54. 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
#55. The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.
John Quincy Adams
#56. To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.
John Quincy Adams
#58. 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
#59. Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, till not a slave shall on this earth be found.
John Quincy Adams
#60. The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.
John Quincy Adams
#61. 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
#62. Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
John Quincy Adams
#63. 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
#64. Whether to the nation or to the state, no service can be or ever will be rendered by a more able or a more faithful public servant.
John Quincy Adams
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.
John Quincy Adams
#69. It is by a thorough knowledge of the whole subject that [people] are enabled to judge correctly of the past and to give a proper direction to the future.
John Quincy Adams
#70. The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.
John Quincy Adams
#71. 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
#72. The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.
John Quincy Adams
#73. A wiser and more useful philosophy, however, directs us to consider man according to the nature in which he was formed; subject to infirmities, which no wisdom can remedy; to weaknesses, which no institution can strengthen; to vices, which no legislation can correct. Hence,
John Quincy Adams
#74. 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
#75. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions and her prayers.
John Quincy Adams
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so, is something worse.
John Quincy Adams
#79. Thus situated, the perilous experiment must be made. Let me make it with full deliberations, and be prepared for the consequences.
John Quincy Adams
#80. 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
#81. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
#82. Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
John Quincy Adams
#83. If the fundamental principles in the Declaration of Independence, as self-evident truths, are real truths, the existence of slavery, in any form, is a wrong.
John Quincy Adams
#85. When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.
John Quincy Adams
#86. There is such seduction in a library of good books that I cannot resist the temptation to luxuriate in reading.
John Quincy Adams
#87. Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
John Quincy Adams
#88. 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
#89. No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.
John Quincy Adams
#90. From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.
John Quincy Adams
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy.
John Quincy Adams
#95. It has been my custom for many years to read the Bible in its entirety once a year
John Quincy Adams
#96. The Sermon on the Mount commands me to lay up for myself treasures, not upon earth, but in Heaven. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ.
John Quincy Adams
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
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