John Quincy Adams Quotes

There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others. [<nowiki/>Immigrants], coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments. They are to expect, if they choose to become citizens, equal rights with those of the natives of the country. They are to expect, if affluent, to possess the means of making their property productive, with moderation, and with safety;—if indigent, but industrious, honest and frugal, the means of obtaining easy and comfortable subsistence for themselves and their families. They come to a life of independence, but to a life of labor—and, if they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, with all its compensating balances of good and evil, the Atlantic is always open to them, to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers.

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.

I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

Let us not be unmindful that liberty is power: that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must, in proportion to its numbers, be the most powerful nation on earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purpose of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.

Por donde sea que el estandarte de la libertad y la independencia se haya desplegado o se vaya a desplegar, ahí
estarán su corazón, sus bendiciones y sus plegarias. Pero no irán a ultramar en busca de monstruos que destruir.
Desearán la libertad y la independencia
de todos, pero sólo serán paladines y
justificadores de sí mismos.

Duty is ours; results are God's.

Se le tue azioni ispirano gli altri a sognare di più, imparare di più, fare di più e diventare di più, allora sei un leader.

By infant baptism a person is committed, while unconscious, to a certain church; he is made a member of that church. Now, unless that church is infallible, it has no right to make a person a member without his consent; for, it may commit him to an alliance with error, and to the defenee of it. But all churches are fallible, they may err; a person who is made a member of such a church in infancy, may discover an error in that church when he arrives at maturity. Without his own consent, he has been committed to that error; he was not left free to choose, where it is evident, from the nature of things, a choice might have been exercised. Pedobaptism is therefore inconsistent with liberty. This will more fully appear from the