Top 100 John Quincy Adams Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.”

— John Quincy Adams

52. “May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.”

— John Quincy Adams

53. “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

54. “This is the last of earth! I am content.”

— John Quincy Adams

55. “Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, till not a slave shall on this earth be found.”

— John Quincy Adams

56. “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

57. “I want the seals of power and place, the ensigns of command, charged by the people’s unbought grace, to rule my native land. Nor crown, nor scepter would I ask but from my country’s will, by day, by night, to ply the task her cup of bliss to fill.”

— John Quincy Adams

58. “What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the fields and vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness?”

— John Quincy Adams

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

— John Quincy Adams

60. “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

61. “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

62. “Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done.”

— John Quincy Adams

63. “Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.”

— John Quincy Adams

64. “The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.”

— John Quincy Adams

65. “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

66. “No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.”

— John Quincy Adams

67. “The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.”

— John Quincy Adams

68. “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

69. “The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.”

— John Quincy Adams

70. “To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.”

— John Quincy Adams

71. “Let us not be unmindful that liberty is power, that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth.”

— John Quincy Adams

72. “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

73. “A politician in this country must be the man of a party. I would fain be the man of my whole country.”

— John Quincy Adams

74. “In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.”

— John Quincy Adams

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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 by found.”

— John Quincy Adams

78. “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

79. “Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.”

— John Quincy Adams

80. “America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”

— John Quincy Adams

81. “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

82. “We know the redemption must come.”

— John Quincy Adams

83. “This mode of electioneering suited neither my taste nor my principles. I thought it equally unsuitable to my personal character and to the station in which I am placed.”

— John Quincy Adams

84. “I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.”

— John Quincy Adams

85. “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

86. “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

87. “To preserve, to improve, and to perpetuate the sources and to direct in their most effective channels the streams which contribute to the public weal is the purpose for which Government was instituted.”

— John Quincy Adams

88. “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

89. “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

90. “Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.”

— John Quincy Adams

91. “I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.”

— John Quincy Adams

92. “The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.”

— John Quincy Adams

93. “There is nothing so deep and nothing so shallow which political enmity will not turn to account.”

— John Quincy Adams

94. “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

95. “America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.”

— John Quincy Adams

96. “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

97. “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.”

— John Quincy Adams

98. “Our Constitution rests on the good sense and the respect of the American people.”

— John Quincy Adams

99. “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

100. “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