John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams also served as an ambassador, and as a member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives representing Massachusetts. These John Quincy Adams quotes will motivate you.
Best John Quincy Adams Quotes
- “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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
- “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” ~ 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
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“Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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
- “There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. 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
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“America is a friend of freedom everywhere, but a custodian only of our own.” ~ 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
- “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
- “…he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“Duty is ours, results are God’s.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “The natural state of mankind … and I know that this is a controversial idea… is freedom… And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “Find a mission that you can give yourself over to and then spend your days moving that mission forward. Man is made so that when anything fires his soul the impossibilities vanish. The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.” ~ 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
- “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
- “Whoever tells the best story wins.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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. 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. Always vote for a principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost. America, in the assembly of nations, has uniformly spoken among them the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of a nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.” ~ 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 Quotes
- “To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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
- “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
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“Our Constitution rests on the good sense and the respect of the American people.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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
- “I would much rather be found guilty of making a serious mistake in judgment, than to be accused of being even a little bit insincere.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “[I believe in the] rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.” ~ 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 Quotes
- “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
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“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
- “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
- “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
- “The Bible carries with it the history of the creation, the fall and redemption of man, and discloses to him, in the infant born at Bethlehem, the Legislator and Savior of the world.” ~ 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
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“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
- “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
- “There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.” ~ 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
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“The first and almost the only Book deserving of universal attention is the Bible.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayal of me was adequate. I do believe that my sideburns were of substantially higher quality, however.” ~ John Quincy Adams Quotes
- “It is essential..that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper. Unless you have such rules and principles, there will be numberless occasions on which you will have no guide for your government but your passions..It is in the Bible, you must learn them, and from the Bible how to practice them.” ~ John Quincy Adams
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“Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “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. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.” ~ 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
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“May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.” ~ 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
- “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
- “The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth. Never since the foundation of the world have the prospects of mankind been more encouraging to that hope than they appear to be at the present time. And may the associated distribution of the Bible proceed and prosper till the Lord shall have made ‘bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God’ (Isaiah 52:10).” ~ 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
