Quotes from book
Democracy: An American Novel

Name: Democracy: An American Novel
Author: Henry Adams

Democracy: An American Novel is a political novel written by Henry Brooks Adams and published anonymously in 1880. Only after the writer's death in 1918 did his publisher reveal Adams's authorship although, upon publication, the novel had immediately become popular. Contemporaneous conjecture placed the book under the joint authorship of Clarence King, John Hay and Henry Adams and their spouses who lived side by side on H street in Washington, D.C. and were collectively sometimes called "the Five of Hearts."

“Who, then, is right? How can we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the world is going straight to perdition; the other half that it is fast becoming perfect. Both cannot be right.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee in Ch. IV
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in the new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the survival of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee!”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Nathan Gore in Ch. IV
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and wrong. Isn't that the first step in politics?”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee in Ch. VIII
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“She regarded men as creatures made for women to dispose of.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

About Madeleine, in Ch. XI
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“The audacity of the man would have seemed sublime if she had felt sure that he knew the difference between good and evil, between a lie and the truth; but the more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee assessing Senator Silas P. Ratcliffe in Ch. XIII
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“…any woman will, under the right conditions, marry any man at any time, provided her "higher nature" is properly appealed to.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Source: Democracy: An American Novel (1880), Ch. XI

“For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Source: Democracy: An American Novel (1880), Ch. I, first lines
Context: For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good.