Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Quincy Adams
Age: 80 †
Born: 1767
Born: July 11
Died: 1848
Died: February 23
6Th U.S. President
Diarist
Diplomat
Lawyer
Politician
Statesperson
Braintree
Massachusetts
John Q. Adams
President Adams
John Adams
J. Q. Adams
J. Adams
JQA
Happy
Virtuous
Death
Chains
May
Laws
Make
Wise
Never
Liberty
Men
Wisdom
Politics
Law
Bind

More quotes by John Quincy Adams

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Whoever tells the best story wins.
John Quincy Adams
Image
Where annual elections end where slavery begins.
John Quincy Adams
Image
A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent...sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.
John Quincy Adams
Image
I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement battered by the winds and broken in on by the storms, and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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
Image
A stout heart, a clear conscience, and never despair.
John Quincy Adams
Image
...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
Image
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
Image
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 by found.
John Quincy Adams
Image
But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow... Like a Coach and six - the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
Our political way of life is by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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