Quotes Library

October 30, 2025

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Henry Adams (1838–1918), American historian, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), in The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.2

To what systematic hatreds do you subscribe? And to what ends? Can such ends be “flipped”, so that you can instead be part of some faction for good?

The son of a congressman, grandson of one president and great grandson of another, Henry Adams had a ringside seat on things political all his life. His comment should not be dismissed out of hand.


More Quotes

March 15, 2025
Men ought to pay a great deal more attention to substance and realities than to ceremonies.
November 3, 2025
One of the uses of history is to free us from a falsely imagined past.
December 23, 2025
Few revolutionists would be such if they were heirs to a baronetcy.
Page 1 of 122