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

November 1, 2025
In the life of any government, however safe its majority, there comes a moment when the social movements
August 10, 2025
A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant.
February 26, 2025
[On Winston Churchill] Restless, almost intolerably so, without capacity for sustained and unexcited labour, egotistical,
Page 53 of 123