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About this quote

What does it mean?
Practical politics often involves disregarding inconvenient truths to maintain power or stability.
In plain terms
Politicians frequently ignore reality to keep things running smoothly.
What can you take from it?
Expect leaders to prioritize convenience over truth.

Where it applies

  • political campaigns
  • policy making
  • corporate leadership

Putting it to work

  • evaluate motives
  • seek data
  • question narratives

Questions to consider

  • When is ignoring facts helpful?
  • How do you spot it?

Another view

Sometimes ignoring facts is a strategic necessity for compromise.

More from Henry Adams

  1. Morality is a private and costly luxury.

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  2. Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

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  3. He had often noticed that six months' oblivion amounts to newspaper-death, and that resurrection is rare. Nothing is easier, if a man wants it, than rest, prof…

    Permalink to quote #22

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