Quote

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.

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
Mark
Multitudes
Choose
Thoroughly
Shafts
Cause
Impressive
Shrouded
Strength
Substitute
Acquainted
Causes
Substitutes
Multitude
Real
Aim
Obscurity
Argument
Advocate
Weakness
Accuracy

More quotes by 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
Westward the star of empire takes its way.
John Quincy Adams
Image
May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
John Quincy Adams
Image
The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the Divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth.
John Quincy Adams
Image
A stranger would think that the people of the United States had no other occupation than electioneering.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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?
John Quincy Adams
Image
To believe that everyone is honest is folly, but to believe that no one is honest is worse.
John Quincy Adams
Image
[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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
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
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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
John Quincy Adams
Image
America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
John Quincy Adams
Image
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
Image
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.
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
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
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.
John Quincy Adams
Image
Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day (the 4th of July)? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?.
John Quincy Adams
Image
Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.
John Quincy Adams