Henry Adams - Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

8 Sourced Quotes

View all Henry Adams Quotes
I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and wrong. Isn't that the first step in politics?

Henry Adams
For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good.

Henry Adams
She regarded men as creatures made for women to dispose of.

Henry Adams
The audacity of the man would have seemed sublime if she had felt sure that he knew the difference between good and evil, between a lie and the truth; but the more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic.

Henry Adams
Who, then, is right? How can we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the world is going straight to perdition; the other half that it is fast becoming perfect. Both cannot be right.

Henry Adams
I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in the new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the survival of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee!

Henry Adams
... any woman will, under the right conditions, marry any man at any time, provided her "higher nature" is properly appealed to.

Henry Adams
Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

Henry Adams