Henry Adams

“Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.”

— Henry Adams

“Friends are born, not made.”

— 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

“The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.”

— Henry Adams

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

— 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

“Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.”

— Henry Adams

“He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.”

— Henry Adams

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

— Henry Adams

“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.”

— Henry Adams

“Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.”

— 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

“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

“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

“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

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

— Henry Adams

“A teacher affects eternity he can never tell where his influence stops.”

— Henry Adams

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

— 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