...more new-fashioned than anybody. This is the way he committed himself in this first message: "While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom which is power than ourselves, are advancing with g1gantic strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold up our...

..."Were we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it...Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority?" Such a profession of faith as this sounded strangely in the ears of Americans, respectful of their...

...advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." "Were we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...

...advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." "Were we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...

...sacred of trusts." " The spirit of improvement," he concluded, " is abroad upon the earth." " While foreign nations less blessed with that freedom which...fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...

...be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow-men." "While foreign nations less blessed with that freedom which...gigantic strides in the career of public improvement," could the United States, Adams asked, "fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied...

...people "would be treachery of the most sacred of trusts." Then he dropped one final bombshell: ". . . Were we to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...

...conscience. The most famous statement of this belief was spoken by John Quincy Adams when he asked, were we to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...

...concluded, if while the Old World monarchies were moving ahead in improving themselves, Americans "were to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents." The twentieth-century reader of Adams's Annual Message...

...himself and his fellow-men. While foreign nations less blessed with that freedom which is power . . . are advancing with gigantic strides in the career...fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence...