Henry Adams
Quotes by Henry Adams
The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.
— Henry Adams
I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
— Henry Adams
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
— Henry Adams
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
— Henry Adams
All experience is an arch, to build upon.
— Henry Adams
I have written too much history to have faith in it and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.
— Henry Adams
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
— Henry Adams
Friends are born, not made.
— Henry Adams
One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
— Henry Adams
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
— Henry Adams
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
— Henry Adams
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.
— Henry Adams
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.
— Henry Adams
Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.
— Henry Adams
Chaos was the law of nature Order was the dream of man.
— Henry Adams
He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.
— Henry Adams
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
— Henry Adams
Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.
— Henry Adams
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
— Henry Adams
Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
— Henry Adams
Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
— Henry Adams
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.
— Henry Adams
American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.
— Henry Adams
A teacher affects eternity he can never tell where his influence stops.
— Henry Adams
Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
— Henry Adams
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
— Henry Adams