James Traub

In the years to come, Adams would discover that the solution to his life lay in politics. He had a gift not for avoiding the storms of partisanship, but for weathering them. - Chapter 9

Adams regarded the Bible not as infallible text but as a human narrative inspired by revelation—the greatest of all works of literature. He knew all the debates and did not wish to be distracted by them from the central message. He told George that it was unknowable, and unnecessary to know, whether Jesus was “a manifestation of almighty God” or simply his only son. - Chapter 14

(On the Monroe Doctrine) It is striking that so self-consciously moral and Christian a figure as Adams was prepared to excuse bellicose behavior in the name of national self-aggrandizement. For Adams, American destiny had a moral force of its own - Chapter 16

Tom’s slow downward spiral, and his ultimate humiliation, offers a pointed reminder of how very hard it was to be an Adams. The family lacked the wealth that served as a safety net for the less lucky or gifted or driven members of other prominent families. At the same time, a merely ordinary disposition, much less a tender one, could not survive the pressure of family expectations. John Quincy had been forged in the fires and emerged whole and hard; neither Charles nor Tom had proved so fortunate. John Quincy Adams had put his own children through the same thresher, and that generation, too, would see a terrible winnowing. - Chapter 17

THE MOST IMPORTANT JOBS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS HAD EVER held were ones to which he had been appointed by a president—minister to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, and England; chief negotiator at Ghent; secretary of state. Of course he had sought electoral positions, but he had not shown much of a gift for attracting voters. He had lost his very first contest, for state assemblyman, and had been recalled as a US senator by a state legislature outraged at his stubborn independence. He did not like appealing to voters, did not believe he should have to, and was not good at it. And now he was living with the consequences. - Chapter 22

As the first president to have gone back to work after his tenure, Adams had given himself the opportunity, as none of his predecessors had, to benefit from a “sober second thought.” He had changed the meanings Americans attached to him. No longer the dynastic New Englander who represented an archaic Federalist America, Adams had become the dauntless standard-bearer of the very modern cause of abolitionism. At the same time, his rootedness in the republican principles of the founders also placed him on a pedestal in the national pantheon. Indeed, the very fact that he had not changed, that he had stood for principles when they were despised and lived to see them vindicated, offered the most powerful evidence of his greatness of character. - Chapter 36