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 25, 2025
When I was a boy I was told that anyone could become President.
February 26, 2025
[On Winston Churchill] Restless, almost intolerably so, without capacity for sustained and unexcited labour, egotistical,
April 2, 2025
[I occupy] the extreme right-wing edge of the left-wing movement.
Page 91 of 122