Quotes from John Quincy Adams

The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.

I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.

The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

The highest, the transcendent glory of the American Revolution was this -- it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the precepts of Christianity.

Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, till not a slave shall on this earth be found.

The Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth ... it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfilment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before.

Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.

So far as the object of taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion with their ability of bearing it without oppression.

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.

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.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.