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

June 6, 2025
The ignoramus has no doubts.
November 20, 2025
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
August 5, 2025
00:40
[On being prime minister] Sometimes the strain is awful, you have to resort to Jane Austen.
Page 42 of 123