Henry Adams Quotes About History

• In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.

  →

  Henry Adams

  1027

• The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S Grant, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Adams (2016). “Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams”, p.1670, Open Road Media

  3783

• No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.

  →

  Henry Adams

  The Education of Henry Adams Vis Interiae (p. 447)

  3223

• History is only a value of relation.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams (1963). “The Education of Henry Adams: And Other Selected Writings”, New York, Twayne Pub

  522

• It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.

  →

  Henry Adams

  4341

• Nothing is easier than to teach historical method, but, when learned, it has little use.

  →

  Henry Adams

  "Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams".

  754

• People here are quite struck aback at Sunday's news of the capture of New Orleans. It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it. The division of American had become an idea so fixed that they had about shut out all the avenues to the reception of any other.

  →

  Henry Adams

  660

• A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams (1920). “The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma”

  918

• My own conclusion is that history is simply social development along the lines of weakest resistance, and that in most cases the line of weakest resistance is found as unconsciously by society as by water.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams, Jacob Clavner Levenson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams: 1868-1885”

  912

• One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams (2009). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.723, The Floating Press

  4861

• History will die if not irritated. The only service I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams (1938). “Letters of Henry Adams ...: 1892-1918”, New York, Houghton

  3348

• History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.204, Harvard University Press

  267

• As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.328, Harvard University Press

  1162

• As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.

  →

  Henry Adams

  1536

• The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrinefor a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S Grant, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Adams (2016). “Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams”, p.1343, Open Road Media

  2989

• History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams (1986). “Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres”, p.37, Penguin

  233

• One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

  →

  Henry Adams

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.57, Harvard University Press

  4229

You May Also Like:

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Jane Addams

Alexander Hamilton

Enrico Caruso

Theodore Roosevelt

James Truslow Adams

Imogen Cunningham

John Hay