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John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was an American lawyer, diplomat, politician, the sixth President of the United States (March 4, 1825 – March 3, 1829), and the son of John Adams and Abigail Adams

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  • 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. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
    • Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816), referring to the popular phrase "My Country, Right or Wrong!" based upon Stephen Decatur's famous statement "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong." The Latin phrase is one that can be translated as : "Let justice be done though heaven should fall" or "though heaven perish".

  • 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.
    • Speech to "the colored people of Pittsburge, Pennsylvania"; Alabama Representative Dellet quoted the speech in the House of Representatives and added "though it cost the blood of thousands of white men." Adams replied Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

  • 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.
    • Letter to James Lloyd (1 October 1822)

  • This house will bear witness to his piety; this town, his birthplace, to his munificence; history to his patriotism; posterity to the depth and compass of his mind.
    • Epitaph for John Adams (1829), inscribed on one of the portals of the United First Parish Church Unitarian (Church of the Presidents), Quincy

  • 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.
    • Letter to A. Bronson (30 July 1838); a similar idea was later more famously expressed by Abraham Lincoln, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right".

  • 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.
    • The Wants of Man, stanza 1, published in The Quincy Patriot (25 September 1841)

  • 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.
    • The Wants of Man, stanza 22 (25 September 1841)

  • 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.
    • "Society and Civilization" in the American Review (July 1845)

  • 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.
    • Report on the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution (c. 1846)

  • This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe,
    For Freedom only deals the deadly blow;
    Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade,
    For gentle peace in Freedom’s hallowed shade.
    • Written in an Album (1842)l compare: "Manus haec inimica tyrannis / Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem", Algernon Sidney, From the Life and Memoirs of Algernon Sidney.

  • 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.
    • Journal of John Quincy Adams, 11 December 1838.

  • 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 be found.
    • Poem

  • 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.
    • Diary record of a comment made by Adams to John Marshall, Charles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams : Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (1875), p. 372

  • All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

  • This is the last of Earth! I am content.
    • Last words (21 February 1848)

  • Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
    • As quoted in The Rebirth of a Nation : With a Bill of Rights for America's Third Century (1978) by Robert S. Minor, p. 10

  • La molesse est doce, et sa suite est cruelle.
    • Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.
    • Attributed as a diary entry, as quoted in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1992) by Suzy Platt

  • Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
    • As quoted in Pocket Patriot : Quotes From American Heroes (2005) edited by Kelly Nickell

Oration at Plymouth (1802)


  • 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.

  • Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No; he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social compact: he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of universal charity: he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future times, by the impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of these principles, "Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign." They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space: he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze;" he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent: bounded, during his residence upon earth, only by the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.
    • He here quotes statements made about William Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson, and then one made in reference to Timon by Alexander Pope in Moral Essays.

  • The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to these irresistible feelings — "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity."
    • He here is translating a phrase of Calgacus in Vita Agricolae by Tacitus : Et majores et posteros cogitate.

  • Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions.
    • In recent years this has often been misquoted as: "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."

  • Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the field of politics supplies the alchymists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon topics, which concern only the interests of eternity; and men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a common-place censure against your ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves. Against these objections, your candid judgment will not require an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude for the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. The original grounds of their separation from the church of England, were not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of communion; much less those of charity, between Christian brethren of the same essential principles.

Independence Day address (1821)

Adams' address as Secretary of State to the U.S. House of Representatives. (4 July 1821)

  • And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: 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.

  • America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once 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 standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Oration on Lafayette (1834)

Oration before the US Congress on the character of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, (31 December 1834)

  • Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime — and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one he found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?

  • There have doubtless been, in all ages, men, whose discoveries or inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.
    Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal Nobility, under the most absolute Monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our Independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it.

  • When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all the institutions of France; when government shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came ; as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be abused; when a claim, any claim, to political power by inheritance shall, in the estimation of the wholfl French people, be held as it now is by the whole people of the North American Union — then will be the time for contemplating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the hour when the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind.

Quotes about Adams

  • The highest glory of the American Revolution was this, said John Quincy Adams, it connected in one indistinguishable bond the principles of civil government and the principle of Christianity.
    • John Wingate Thornton in The Pulpit of The American Revolution (1860)
 
Quoternity
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