“ Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them. ”
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1906). copy citation
| Author | Henry Adams |
|---|---|
| Source | The Education of Henry Adams |
| Topic | education illusion |
| Date | 1906 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2044/2044-h/2044-h.htm |
Context
“Seneca closed the vast circle of his knowledge by learning that a friend in power was a friend lost--a fact very much worth insisting upon--while the gray-headed moth that had fluttered through many moth-administrations and had singed his wings more or less in them all, though he now slept nine months out of the twelve, acquired an instinct of self-preservation that kept him to the north side of La Fayette Square, and, after a sufficient habitude of Presidents and Senators, deterred him from hovering between them.
Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them. As far as Adams could teach experience, he was bound to warn them that he had found it an invariable disaster. Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had been always tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards;”
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