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[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

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
Suggesting
Consists
Problems
Answers
Philosophy
Problem
Unintelligible
Insoluble
Chiefly

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Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
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History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.
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Teachers affect eternity no one can tell where their influence stops.
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One friend in a lifetime is much two are many three are hardly possible.
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All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes.
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Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
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All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people
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What a vast fraternity it is,--that of 'Hearts that Ache.' For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.
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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.
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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.
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Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.
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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.
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Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
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His brothers were the type he was the variation.
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Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.
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The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.
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If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.
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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
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Politics is simply the organization of hatreds.
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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.
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