Quote#World
Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no…
Quote byHenry Adams · 1838–1918
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Esther: A Novel (1884), About the Rev. Stephen Hazard, in Ch. VIII.
English (original)
Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because it could not be explained.
— Henry Adams
More from Henry Adams
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.
I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways.
We never despised the world or its opinions, we only failed to find out its existence.
A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum.
Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the …
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.