John Quincy Adams Quotes
The right must ... yield to the expedient.
John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848, 6th President of the United States (Independent, MA), Memoirs, VIII
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He had been a Congressman before assuming the Presidency.
Some politicians tell their constituents that they compromise but not on principles. This is illusory and often disingenuous as well. In a democracy there are many sets of principles that conflict with others just as deeply and frequently held. Even many of the principles of the U. S. Constitution conflict with other constitutional principles. If politicians never compromised on principles and ideals, there would be no operational government unless it were a theocracy or a dictatorship where there were only one set of principles in the society. The more democratic a society is the more its politicians must compromise with their fundamental principles and ideals.
Taylor was the Chief Prosecutor of the Nazi War Criminals at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. After the war, there were tens of thousands of Nazis that were guilty of War Crimes. As an expediency measure, the allies decided to not formally prosecute 100,000 of the lower ranking war criminals casing the British Prosecutor to resign in protest. However, most Americans had no idea that there were so many war criminals and that the decision had been made not tp prosecute them. There were a number of trials and convictions of the highest ranking Nazis, the highest profile Nazi war criminals were executed or given life sentences. However, a larger group of the 2nd tier of war criminals benefitted from the politics of the beginning of the Cold War. Some politicians in the United States thought these Nazi War Criminals might be useful to the West in the coming struggle with Russia. Politically, they did not have enough clout to free them, but they persuaded McCloy to commute their death sentences, so that they might be released a little later to work for us against the Russians. Also, they shortened the sentences of others. The result was that there were after a few years. number of mass murderers and slave labor exploiters who ended up in significant positions in the West German government, and some like Werner Von Braun were brought to the United States to strengthen our Rocket development and jet airplane design, the only two areas where the German's were ahead of us. Most Americans had no idea that murders and war criminals were in these positions until years later.
Responding to a question of how he, as a black man, could talk with the president of South Africa:
John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams also served as an ambassador, and as a member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives representing Massachusetts. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second U.S. president from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and in the mid-1830s became affiliated with the Whig Party.
