"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
"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."
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Source: Henry Adams, Jacob Clavner Levenson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams: 1868-1885”
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More quotes by Henry Adams
"All experience is an arch, to build upon."
"The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled."
"One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim."
"Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man."
"[regarding US conquest of the Philippines] I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways."