American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
Henry AdamsRead
Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Chaos is inherent in nature, while humans strive for order.
This quote by Henry Adams reflects the inherent unpredictability and disorder present in the natural world, contrasting it with humanity's desire for structure and control. It highlights a fundamental tension between the chaotic aspects of existence and the ordered systems we attempt to impose upon our lives.
Themes
ChaosOrderNatureDreamPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the unpredictability of life and the human search for meaning.
More from Henry Adams
All quotes βOf all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
Henry AdamsRead
Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
Henry AdamsRead
Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont Saint Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other.
Henry AdamsRead
The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
Henry AdamsRead
The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.
Henry AdamsRead
Similar quotes
He who carries God in his heart bears Heaven with him wherever he goes.
Ignatius Of LoyolaRead
This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
Primo LeviRead
The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.
Clive BarkerRead
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
I see tremendous imbalance in the world. A very uneven playing field, which has gotten tilted very badly. I consider it unstable. At the same time, I don't exactly see what is going to reverse it.
George SorosRead
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
Eugene IonescoRead