Henry Adams Quotes
A third rate nonentity whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one.
Referring to Rutherford B. Hayes and his Republican nomination for president:
Henry Adams, 1838-1918, Politician, Historian & Writer, Quoted in Tindall, America: A Narrative History, 1984
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His judgment was as flawed here as with his belief that he had agreed to a peace with Hitler. He completely misjudged and underestimated the Nazi dictator.
The Declaration of Independence of the United States was signed that day.
Calling for President George W. Bush to replace Dan Quayle as Vice President:
After his Presidency, Adams served in the House of Representatives for many years and was thus active in politics.
This quotation illustrates an interesting phenomenon in American Presidential Politics. There have been Democratic Presidents (FDR and Obama are the most glaring examples) for whom there was vituperative hatred and derision from the conservative Republicans who would frequently refer to them as Socialists and would believe that they were trying to lead the country on the path to socialism. The Presidents always stated that they were opposed to socialism, but to little avail with their conservative haters. But the socialists of the times and even the left wing of the Democratic Party not only did not see them as socialists, but were not very supportive or complementary of their skills and capabilities. Roosevelt reveled in the situation and “welcomed: their hate. Obama was more of a public centrist who tried to avoid the president getting involved in the extreme partisanship of the day.
He was particularly distressed that Jefferson did not believe in the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Flood. Actually, this was the only Presidential race in American History where BOTH candidates, Adams and Jefferson, were not orthodox Christians and BOTH rejected literal interpretation of the Bible and even questioned the Trinity. Adams religious views were not as public as Jefferson’s and so many who voted against Jefferson because he was not a literal follower of the Bible, did not realize that Adams also was not and like Jefferson regarded the Trinity and the deification of Jesus as naive belief of unthinking people.
The candidates had remarkably little experience in foreign affairs with the exception of Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich who in the extreme right wing ideology driving the Republican primary voters at the time had little chance of winning as they were too far to the left for the Republicans of the time.
Henry Brooks Adams was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents.
