Henry Adams Quotes - Page 4

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• [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

  Thinking, Order, Years

  "The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume IV: 1892-1899". Book by Henry Adams, 1988.

  61 Copy quote

• We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

  Henry Adams

  Order, Sloth, Laziness

  'The Education of Henry Adams' (1907) ch. 29

  8 Copy quote

• The Jewish question is really the most serious of our problems.

  Henry Adams

  Serious, Problem, Jew

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Self, Aggravation

  'The Education of Henry Adams' (1907) ch. 10

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Beauty, Women, Glowing

  "The Letters of a World Watcher" by William S. McFeely, www.nytimes.com. March 6, 1983.

  8 Copy quote

• It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

  Henry Adams

  Men, Political, Civil War

  American Heritage magazine, December 1955.

  12 Copy quote

• It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.

  Henry Adams

  War, Fighting, Army

  7 Copy quote

• Wild as man was, and disgusting as the more degraded tribes and communities were, the best of them, and all those from which further advance came, were marked by good qualities, or they could never have risen to a higher stage.

  Henry Adams

  Men, Community, Quality

  Henry Adams (1973). “Historical Essays”, p.4, Georg Olms Verlag

  5 Copy quote

• At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

  Henry Adams

  Education, Teacher, Men

  Henry Adams (2008). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.12, Cosimo, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Philosophy, Church, Answers

  Henry Adams (2015). “Esther”, p.6, Sheba Blake Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Teachers affect eternity; no one can tell where their influence stops.

  Henry Adams

  Teacher, Powerful, Influence

  5 Copy quote

• Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

  Henry Adams

  Games, Political, Politics

  Henry Adams, Jacob Clavner Levenson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams: 1868-1885”

  10 Copy quote

• History is only a value of relation.

  Henry Adams

  History, Relation, Values

  Henry Adams (1963). “The Education of Henry Adams: And Other Selected Writings”, New York, Twayne Pub

  6 Copy quote

• My own conclusion is that history is simply social development along the lines of weakest resistance, and that in most cases the line of weakest resistance is found as unconsciously by society as by water.

  Henry Adams

  History, Water, Development

  Henry Adams, Jacob Clavner Levenson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams: 1868-1885”

  8 Copy quote

• Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents has been always tragic, chiefly as an almost indecent excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carion.

  Henry Adams

  Mind, President, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.

  Henry Adams

  Play, Deuces, Questions And Answers

  Henry Adams (1951). “Selected letters”, New York, Farrar

  5 Copy quote

• From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

  Henry Adams

  Running, Art, Philosophy

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.15, Booklassic

  8 Copy quote

• The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of today, were all emanations of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.

  Henry Adams

  Play, Hymns, Yesterday

  Henry Adams (2014). “Esther”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

  5 Copy quote

• Charles Sumner's mind had reached the calm of WATER which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contains nothing but itself.

  Henry Adams

  Water, Mind, Calm

  The Education of Henry Adams ch. 16 (1907)

  4 Copy quote

• Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.

  Henry Adams

  Marriage, Passion, Men

  Henry Adams (1973). “Historical Essays”, p.6, Georg Olms Verlag

  5 Copy quote

• Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy.

  Henry Adams

  Boys, Enemy, Looks

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.11, Booklassic

  6 Copy quote

• I am not prepared to deny or assert any proposition which concerns myself; but certainly this solitary struggle with platitudinous atoms, called men and women by courtesy, leads me to wish for my wife again. How did I ever hit on the only woman in the world who fits my cravings and never sounds hollow anywhere? Social chemistry-the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules-is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Satisfaction In Life

  Henry Adams (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes 1-3: 1858-1892”, p.28, Harvard University Press

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• [P]olitical and social and scientific values ... should be correlated in some relation of movement that could be expressed in mathematics, nor did one care in the least that all the world said it could not be done, or that one knew not enough mathematics even to figure a formula beyond the schoolboy s=(1/2)gt2. If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person ... could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply its attraction into the square of its time. He had only to find a value, even infinitesimal, for its attraction.

  Henry Adams

  Science, Moon, Squares

  6 Copy quote

• For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.

  Henry Adams

  Book, Winter, Ridiculous

  Henry Adams (2015). “Democracy”, p.2, Booklassic

  5 Copy quote

• There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody--I AM!

  Henry Adams

  Ideas, Church, Atoms

  Henry Adams (2015). “Esther”, p.6, Sheba Blake Publishing

  5 Copy quote

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