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

May 7, 2025
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor
March 18, 2025
It’s 90 per cent of the politicians who give the other 10 per cent a bad name.
January 12, 2025
It is a great error to speak of the things of this world absolutely and indiscriminately and to deal with them,
Page 51 of 123