Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Men
Year
American
Massed
Force
Houses
House
Central
Become
Forces
Power
Creatures
Every
Struggle
Years
Politics

More quotes by Henry Adams

Image
[regarding US conquest of the Philippines] I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways.
Henry Adams
Image
During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
Henry Adams
Image
The best date movies give you something to talk about. A movie that's a downer is a great way to find out about someone.
Henry Adams
Image
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
Image
As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.
Henry Adams
Image
One friend in a lifetime is much two are many three are hardly possible.
Henry Adams
Image
The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
Henry Adams
Image
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
Image
That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true work and whiskey were his stimulants work was a form of vice but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.
Henry Adams
Image
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.
Henry Adams
Image
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
Image
Society is immoral and immortal it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
Henry Adams
Image
The proper study of mankind is woman.
Henry Adams
Image
In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.
Henry Adams
Image
Teachers affect eternity no one can tell where their influence stops.
Henry Adams
Image
An artist's business is only to see.
Henry Adams
Image
The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.
Henry Adams
Image
From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty, were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not, was in his eyes a schoolmaster -- that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys.
Henry Adams
Image
Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.
Henry Adams
Image
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