John Quincy Adams Quotes

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom.

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.

The conservative vision regards politics more as a matter of gratitude than entitlement - duty over rights. We have inherited so much: a wonderful country, a culture of freedom and abundance, even our life itself, earned through no effort of our own but bequeathed as a gift from our forefathers.

Only by acknowledging the success and sacrifice made by those who came before us can we fully understand what we must do to ensure the liberty of those who will succeed us.

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

Tonight, we reclaim our country so that we can pass on to future generations the freedoms and the opportunity that we have inherited from those who came before us.

Our forefathers paved the way for us. Let's take their values, and their strengths, and rededicate ourselves to doing whatever it takes to keep America the greatest country in the history of man. And woman.

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights which they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

Each generation in this country gets the responsibility of being the ambassadors for this American democracy that our parents and grandparents fought, bled, and died for.

Who are we to think that our generation is going to be the first generation to benefit from all the sacrifices that others have made without giving some modern-day equivalent of our own lives, fortunes, and sacred honor?

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.

Men of England! who inheritRights that cost your sires their blood.

I wish we would all remember that being American is not just about the freedom we have; it is about those who gave it to us.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

The men and women of my generation are heirs to that great collective success which has been admired worldwide and of which we are so proud. It is now up to us to pass it on to the coming generations.

Do not allow to slip away from you freedoms the people who came before you won with such hard knocks.

Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations, that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Use your lives wisely, my friends, and conserve these precious freedoms for future generations.

Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America, but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces.

How much more must this be so in my own case for I am conscious not only of the great names and achievements of those who have preceded me, but also of the living presence of many of my masters and teachers.

Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.

Like a precious family heirloom, freedom is not just ours to enjoy, but to treasure, protect, and pass on to future generations.