Henry Adams Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.”

“No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.”

“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.”

“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.”

“The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.”

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

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

“It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.”