Henry Adams – 26 Quotes

26 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

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

– Henry Adams

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

– 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

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

– Henry Adams

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

– 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 are a very unsatisfactory game.

– Henry Adams

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

– 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

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

– 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