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To preserve, to improve, and to perpetuate the sources and to direct in their most effective channels the streams which contribute to the public weal is the purpose for which Government was instituted.

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
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Preserve
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Perpetuate

More quotes by John Quincy Adams

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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.
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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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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.
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The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to these irresistible feelings - Think of your forefathers and of your posterity.
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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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Let us consider an alternative style of thinking, which we can call 'creative thinking.' It is playfully instructive to note that the word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters. The only difference between the two is that you 'C' [see] differently.
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America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
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I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.
John Quincy Adams
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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.
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The Sermon on the Mount commands me to lay up for myself treasures, not upon earth, but in Heaven. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ.
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All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.
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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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The firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of the defenses of war.
John Quincy Adams
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This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe, For Freedom only deals the deadly blow Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade, For gentle peace in Freedom's hallowed shade.
John Quincy Adams
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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.
John Quincy Adams