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Quotes from Henry Adams

History will die if not irritated. The only service I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea.
~ Henry Adams
History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.
~ 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 historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.
~ Henry Adams
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.
~ Henry Adams
A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.
~ Henry Adams
Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
~ Henry Adams
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 Adams
Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
~ Henry Adams
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.
~ Henry Adams
Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them.
~ Henry Adams
They know enough who know how to learn.
~ Henry Adams
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
~ Henry Adams
Every one must bear his own universe, and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.
~ 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
Intimates are predestined.
~ Henry Adams
Laplace would have found it child's-play to fix a ratio of progression in mathematical science between Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton and himself
~ Henry Adams
Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
~ Henry Adams
All experience is an arch, to build upon.
~ 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
Chaos breeds life; Order creates habit.
~ Henry Adams
If I grapple with sin in my own strength, the devil knows he may go to sleep.
~ Henry Adams
One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.
~ Henry Adams
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
~ Henry Adams