Henry Brooks Adams Quotes

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Even in America, the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone – but never hustled.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

The power of the priesthood lies in the submission to a creed. In their onslaughts on rebellion they have exhausted human torments; nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse, but rather joy, when slaying Christ’s enemies and their own.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.