The Education of Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams is simultaneously an insightful autobiography written in the third person and a damning critique of modern educational theory and practice. Originally written in 1907, but not published until 1918 after the death of the author, it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. It was also recently named the #1 book on Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction Books list.

Quotations

Here are some selected quotations from the book.

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• Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
• The Ego has ... become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.
• Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
• Practical politics consists of ignoring facts.
• No mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.
• Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
• From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.