“The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter but he never felt the law.”

—  Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter but he never felt the la…" by Henry Adams?
Henry Adams photo
Henry Adams 311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918

Related quotes

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side—that is the terra incognita of the insane. He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen.

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“He declared that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Socrates, 16.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Graham Greene photo
Ada Lovelace photo
P. D. James photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo

“There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.”

Source: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), Chapter IV, p. 310 https://books.google.com/books?id=uJDEx6rPu1QC&pg=PA310.

Henry Adams photo
W. Mark Felt photo

“William Mark Felt was a traitor to Nixon and America! What he did caused 53,000 American soldiers to die for nothing in Vietnam!”

W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal

Pat Buchanan on MSNBC (31 May 2005)

Aphra Behn photo

“He that knew all that ever Learning writ,
Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.”

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer

The Emperor of the Moon, Act III, sc. iii.

Related topics