Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918) was an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents. As a young Harvard graduate, he was secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln’s ambassador in London, a posting that had much influence on the younger man, both through experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became a noted political journalist who entertained America’s foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.
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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Living, Habit, Order
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence—beginning with one’s own.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Possibilities, Potential, Intelligence
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Writing, Words
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Doubt, Intelligence, Inferiority
A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.
—Henry Adams
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