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
A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A society that is unchanging lacks history and the desire to learn from it.
Henry Adams suggests that a society in stable equilibrium, one that does not experience change or progress, lacks a history worth recording. Without the desire to understand past events, such a society becomes stagnant, devoid of growth or the lessons learned from previous experiences, illustrating the essential nature of change and history in human development.
Themes
SocietyHistoryEquilibriumChangeLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of learning from past mistakes, one might reference this quote.
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
Spiritual life can certainly follow the pattern one sees in the fake martial arts, with most teachers making nebulous and magical claims that never get tested, while their students derange themselves with weird ideas, empty rituals, and other affectations.
Sam HarrisRead
Puddleglum's my name. But it doesn't matter if you forget it. I can always tell you again.
C. S. LewisRead
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
Simone WeilRead
Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
Emile M. CioranRead
A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
Georges BatailleRead
I believe in truths, but I don't believe in the Truth. Furthermore, I think that vision of an underlying Truth, with as capital T, that scientists are privy to, has been a very counterproductive vision. It has served scientists very well, but what it has done, above all, is encloses the world of science and immunize it from criticism.
Evelyn Fox KellerRead