John Quincy Adams quotes

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman and diplomat who served as the sixth President of the United States. Known for his strong advocacy against slavery and his role in formulating U.S. foreign policy, especially the Monroe Doctrine. He continued to serve his country as a congressman after his presidency, becoming a leading opponent of slavery in the House of Representatives. Here are 59 of his quotes:

Where annual elections end where slavery begins.

John Quincy Adams

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

This is the last of Earth! I am content.

John Quincy Adams

Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

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

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Quincy Adams

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

John Quincy Adams

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

Try and fail,but don't fail to try.

John Quincy Adams

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

John Quincy Adams

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.

John Quincy Adams

The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar instutitions is to deny the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that he has inalienable rights.

John Quincy Adams

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.

John Quincy Adams

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

John Quincy Adams