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

October 4, 2025
Most men make little other use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.
September 27, 2025
When the lay public rallies round to an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists
March 29, 2025
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
Page 89 of 122