Henry Adams History Quotations

One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

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

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

History is only a value of relation.

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.

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.

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