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Home
Authors
Henry B. Adams
Historian
About the author
All experience is an arch, to build upon.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Experience
The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Influence
#Difference
Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Men
#Passion
Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Man
#Grave
We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Order
#Obstacles
Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Politics
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Practice
#Politics
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Power
#Effect
#Poison
Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Power
#Facts
#Energy
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Facts
#Politics
Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Man
#Simplicity
The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#President
#American
#Sea
The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Power
#Men
#Self
#Effect
#Killing
#Publicity
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 B. Adams,
Historian
#Nothing
#Purpose
#Trust
#Press
#Lies
The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#President
#Washington
#Evolution
#Progress
The proper study of mankind is woman.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Study
#Woman
#Mankind
The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Man
#Woman
#Wrong
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Intelligence
They know enough who know how to learn.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
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 B. Adams,
Historian
#Life
#Thought
#Needs
#Community
#Friendship
#Rivalry
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Nothing
#Ignorance
#Education
#Facts
Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Genius
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Life
#Habit
#Order
#Chaos
No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Years
#Man
A friend in power is a friend lost.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Power
#Friend
A teacher affects eternity he can never tell, where his influence stops.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Influence
#Eternity
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Liberty
#Responsibility
#Restraint
#Absence
Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Marriage
#Accident
#Companionship
Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Problems
#Answers
At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Law
#Man
#Nature
#Dream
#Order
#Chaos
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#End
#Education
#Knowledge
#Nature
#Human nature
#Beginning
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Words
#Thought
#Man
American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#American
#Society
Morality is a private and costly luxury.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Luxury
#Morality
Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Taste
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Beginning
#Intelligence
It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#World
#Men
#Harm
Intimates are predestined.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Purpose
Friends are born, not made.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Friends
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
Henry B. Adams,
Historian
#Man
#Faith
#Intelligence