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

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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.
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Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops it was the very best substitute for religion a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.
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An artist's business is only to see.
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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
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We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.
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Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point.
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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 am fairly tired--bored beyond endurance--by the world we live in, and its ideals, and am ready to say so, not violently, but kindly, as one rubs salt into the back of a flogged sailor as though one loved him.
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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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Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.
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Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.
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Morality is a private and costly luxury.
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Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.
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Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
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In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.
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History is only a value of relation.
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If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.
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The Jewish question is really the most serious of our problems.
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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.
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A friend in power is a friend lost.
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