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Henry Adams Quotes about History

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

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

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

History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

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

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

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

History is only a value of relation.

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

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

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

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

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

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
Play, History, Chinese

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

Henry Adams
History, Definitions, Want
Henry Adams (1920). “The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma”

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
Rome, Years, History
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

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
Race, History, Statistics
The Education of Henry Adams Vis Interiae (p. 447)

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
Honesty, History, Trying
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

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

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

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
Cutting, History, United States

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

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

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