Henry Adams

Bekannte Zitate von Henry Adams

Friends are born, not made.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

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

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

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

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

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.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

I have written too much history to have faith in it and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.