Henry Adams Quotes

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

A congressman is a pig. The only way to get his snout from the trough is to rap it sharply with a stick.

Politics is simply the organization of hatreds.

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.

The social side of Washington was to be taken for granted as three-fourths of existence. Politics and reform became the detail, and waltzing the profession

A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.

Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.

As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people

American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.

Henry James chews more than he bites off.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.

I want to be advertised and the easiest way is to do something obnoxious and do it well.

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.

[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy.

Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough; its judgments rougher still.

Good men do the most harm.

Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.

No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.

A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.

As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.

My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.

The best date movies give you something to talk about. A movie that's a downer is a great way to find out about someone.

A boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.

The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.