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The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

John Quincy Adams

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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
Human
Governments
Humans
Former
Lived
Short
Democracy
Fluctuating
Age
Unstable
Experience
Shown
Government
Ages

More quotes by John Quincy Adams

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The law is an artificial human construct, quite arbitrary, and of absolutely no use anywhere else but in a court of law!
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So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
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[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.
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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.
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There is such seduction in a library of good books that I cannot resist the temptation to luxuriate in reading.
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A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.... One of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity...he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory.
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I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.
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Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
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I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service and knowing that except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain, with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.
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The Law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code.
John Quincy Adams
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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.
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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
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I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
John Quincy Adams
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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
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A stout heart, a clear conscience, and never despair.
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Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.
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A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent...sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.
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When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.
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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
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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