“I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.”
Author
Henry Adams
26 quotes
“The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.”
More from Henry Adams
“Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.”
“Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.”
“All experience is an arch, to build upon.”
“I have written too much history to have faith in it and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.”
“No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.”
“Friends are born, not made.”
“One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.”
“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”
“There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.”
“It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.”
“The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.”
“Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.”
“Chaos was the law of nature Order was the dream of man.”
“He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.”
“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
“Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.”
“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.”
“Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
“Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
“Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.”
“American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.”
“A teacher affects eternity he can never tell where his influence stops.”
“Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.”