Henry Adams
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adamswas an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1838
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Henry Adams quotes about
math branches needed
In the one branch he most needed
political occasional duty
As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.
political use sticks
You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!
history historical use
Nothing is easier to teach than historical method, but, when learned, it has little use.
history definitions want
A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.
honesty history trying
The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.
crush attitude perfect
The first serious consciousness of Nature's gesture - her attitude towards life-took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, all insanity of force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting, and destroying what these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect.
impossible humans human-intelligence
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.
expression habit strikes
The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.
technology world ends
The world is coming to an end in 1950.
tangled may enough
History is a tangled skein that one may take up at any point, and break when one has unravelled enough.
fighting men soul-and-body
Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont Saint Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other.
training mind want
The mind resorts to reason for want of training.
teaching ignorance study
The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.