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

January 29, 2025
Ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws,
October 27, 2025
Few things are as immutable as the addiction of political groups to the ideas by which they have once won office.
October 3, 2025
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
Page 61 of 122