Quotes from CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

Mr. Degrand told me today that he had seen a notice of my Lecture in the Evening Gazette very complimentary. A few tones of the voice have done more to give me notoriety than five years of diligent reasoning. Such is life.

It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.

For however I may in former days as a young man have liked the notice which the being in a great man's train secures one, now that I have a fixed character of my own, obscurity is far the most agreeable.

Shrewd as the British capitalist proverbially is, his judgment in regard to American investments has been singularly fallible.

The public corruption is the foundation on which corporations always depend for their political power. There is a natural tendency to coalition between them and the lowest strata of political intelligence and morality; for their agents must obey, not question. The lobby is their home, and the lobby thrives as political virtue decays. The ring is their symbol of power, and the ring is the natural enemy of political purity and independence.

Carried down my last number to the Advocate. They will not publish the letters I wish. So much for the freedom of that press.

In this country ... men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.

Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life.

The American experiment is the most tremendous and far reaching engine of social change which has ever either blessed or cursed mankind.

More than all, and above all, [George] Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.

The banks cannot hold back or withdraw from the dilemma in which their mode of doing business has placed them. They must carry the load to save their margins.

All equally see in the convulsion in America an era in the history of the world, out of which must come in the end a general recognition of the right of mankind to the produce of their labor and the pursuit of happiness.

It may be that our society is only passing through a period of ugly transition, but the present evil has its root deep down in the social organization, and springs from a diseased public opinion.

In many things I defer more to the authority of my grandfather whose political sagacity appears to have been the most striking characteristic of his life. He saw no cessation of war, still less much perfectibility while man is constituted as he has been known to be since the world began. And I think with him.

The pretence of resistance to monopoly would always serve them, as it had served them before, as a plausible and popular cry.

This is one of those days which I am obliged to record as almost a blank in my existence.

Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. The hair-raising revelations of skullduggery and grand-scale thievery merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.

More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself.

It is so very easy and so very pleasant, too, to read only books which lead to nothing, light and interesting books, and the more the better, that it is almost as difficult to wean ourselves from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus upon tea or coffee or spirits.