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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Henry Adams

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Henry Adams
Age: 80 †
Born: 1838
Born: February 16
Died: 1918
Died: March 27
Historian
Historian Of The Modern Age
Journalist
Mathematician
Novelist
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Frances Snow Compton
Henry Adams
Practicals
Practical
Witty
Politician
Politics
Science
Ignoring
Facts
Individualism
Political
Consists

More quotes by Henry Adams

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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
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One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.
Henry Adams
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You may cut off the heads of every rich man now living--of every statesman--every literary, and every scientific authority, without in the least changing the social situation. Artists, of course, disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. Corporations are not elevators, but levellers, as I see them.
Henry Adams
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My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.
Henry Adams
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It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
Henry Adams
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Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence.
Henry Adams
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Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
Henry Adams
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I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.
Henry Adams
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As for piracy, I love to be pirated. It is the greatest compliment an author can have. The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my life. Anyone may steal what he likes from me.
Henry Adams
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As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.
Henry Adams
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Education should try to lessen the obstacles, diminish the friction, invigorate the energy, and should train minds to react, not at haphazard, but by choice, on the lines of force that attract their world. What one knows is, in youth, of little moment they know enough who know how to learn.
Henry Adams
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Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.
Henry Adams
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Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.
Henry Adams
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The philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem.
Henry Adams
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Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point.
Henry Adams
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I firmly believe, that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.
Henry Adams
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To my fancy, one looks back on life, it has only two responsibilities, which include all the others: one is the bringing of new life into existence the other, educating it after it is brought in. All betrayals of trust result from these original sins.
Henry Adams
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American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
Henry Adams
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During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
Henry Adams
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The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience... [to me] the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.
Henry Adams