Henry Adams Quotes

There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater.

Statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates.

No White House staff person wants to conflict with the First Lady who goes home and has the ear of the President all night.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Donald Trump, perhaps the least historically minded man ever to reach the pinnacle of power, has fallen under the spell of what (and who) has come before. What's revealing about a President's sense of history is less about the history itself than about what that President's perspective on the history tells us about him.

I've said to [Donald Trump], and I think others have said to him that the day that he is the President of the United States, there are world capitals and financial markets and people all around the world who take really seriously what he says, and in a way that's just not true before you're actually sworn in as president.

If England became a world power, it was because of the industrial revolution.

I really don't sit here and dream what life in the White House will be like. I just can't go beyond the point when the people go to the ballot box with all that power.

We have been through a period where we see power leaching away from Washington. Who is more important in the world today: Bill Clinton or Bill Gates? I don't know.

I think political people are afraid of me.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

If America wants to retain its position as a global power, its president must listen to the people and show strong leadership at this turning point in human history.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

I want to talk to these people because they stay in power and you change all the time.

World history is a court of judgment.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

I really want to be governor when I have a partner in the White House.

The day I became press secretary to the President of the United States, I was in an entirely different world from the one I'd been in the day before.

As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.

I can call a march, and thousands come out, and I happen to have access to the White House at the same time.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

I think it would be so much fun to be in the White House.