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Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.

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
War
Hands
Character
Rigorous
Give
Occasional
Giving
Providence
Tone
Instruments
Nations

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The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy.
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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.
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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.
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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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America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
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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.
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A stout heart, a clear conscience, and never despair.
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Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.
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A man's diary is a record in youth of his sentiments, in middle age of his actions, in old age of his reflections.
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The harmony of the nation is promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of personal friendship formed between the representatives of its several parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.
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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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To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.
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From the day of the Declaration...they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.
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My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
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The American continents, by the free and independent condition that they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation byany European powers? In the wars of the Europeanpowers inmattersrelating to ourselves, we have never taken any part nor does it comport with our policy to do so.
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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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I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.
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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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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.
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The Constitution had provided that all the public functionaries of the Union...should be under oath or affirmation for its support. The homage of religious faith was thus superadded to all the obligations of temporal law to give it strength.
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