Explore Quotes by 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.

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.

Individual liberty is individual power.

Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.

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.

From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

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.

[I believe in the] rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation.

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.

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

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

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!

Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

The Law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code.

The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.