John Quincy Adams Quotes - Page 4

We know the redemption must come.

The law is an artificial human construct, quite arbitrary, and of absolutely no use anywhere else but in a court of law!

My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble away... the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively asserted and at others countenances His disciples in asserting that He was God.

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!

The first and almost the only Book deserving of universal attention is the Bible.

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.

To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

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.

The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not.

A stout heart, a clear conscience, and never despair.

It is by a thorough knowledge of the whole subject that [people] are enabled to judge correctly of the past and to give a proper direction to the future.

Westward the star of empire takes its way.

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.

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.

Life is a problem; mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem right or wrong.

The great interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause of prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to the others. All these interests are alike under the protecting power of the legislative authority, and the duties of the representative bodies are to conciliate them in harmony together.

Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.

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.

The freedom of the press should be inviolate.

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.

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

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.

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.

[America's] 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.