Gary Inbinder’s Reviews > The Education of Henry Adams > Status Update

Every man with self-respect enough to become effective, if only as a machine, has had to account to himself for himself somehow, and to invent a formula of his own for his universe, if the standard formulas failed. There, whether finished or not, education stopped. The formula, once made, could be but verified.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 162). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

(Theodore) Roosevelt, as every one knew, was always an amusing talker, and had the reputation of being indiscreet...(he) concluded by declaring that war was imminent; that it ought to be stopped; that it could be stopped: “I could do it myself; I could stop it to-morrow!”

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 159). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

Manchuria knew every step into war; Japan had completed every preparation; Alexeieff had collected his army and fleet at Port Arthur, mounting his siege guns and laying in enormous stores, ready for the expected attack; from Yokohama to Irkutsk, the whole East was under war conditions; but Europe knew nothing.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 159). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

He found himself in a land where no one had ever penetrated before; where order was an accidental relation obnoxious to nature; artificial compulsion imposed on motion; against which every free energy of the universe revolted; and which, being merely occasional, resolved itself back into anarchy at last.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 157). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

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. The laws of history only repeat the lines of force or thought. Yet though his will be iron, he cannot help now and then resuming his humanity or simianity in face of a fear.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 157). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

WASHINGTON WAS ALWAYS AMUSING, but in 1900, as in 1800, its chief interest lay in its distance from New York. The movement of New York had become planetary—beyond control—while the task of Washington, in 1900 as in 1800, was to control it. The success of Washington in the past century promised ill for its success in the next.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 150). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

Nihilism had no bottom. For thousands of years every philosopher had stood on the shore of this sunless sea, diving for pearls and never finding them. All had seen that, since they could not find bottom, they must assume it.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 148). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power-houses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 145). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

...Roosevelt and Lodge were playing a game in which they were always liable to find the shifty sands of American opinion yield suddenly under their feet. With this game an elderly friend had long before carried acquaintance as far as he wished. There was nothing in it for him but the amusement of the pugilist or acrobat.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 145). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had been always tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it...

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (p. 144). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.