Quotes By Henry B. Adams

A friend in power is a friend lost.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

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

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

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Friends are born, not made.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

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