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 f… - Henry Adams

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Engraved portrait of Henry Adams, facing right

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.

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About Henry Adams

Henry Brooks Adams (16 February 1838 – 27 March 1918) was a U.S. historian, journalist, novelist and educator. He was the great-grandson of John Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, William Notman (Public domain / CC0)

Also Known As

Pen Names: Frances Snow Compton
Native Name: Henry Brooks Adams
Alternative Names: Henry B. Adams

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Additional quotes by Henry Adams

Some millions of other people felt the same helplessness, but few of them were seeking education, and to them helplessness seemed natural and normal, for they had grown up in the habit of thinking a steam-engine or a dynamo as natural as the sun, and expected to understand one as little as the other.

There is nothing unscientific in the idea that, beyond the lines of force felt by the senses, the universe may be — as it has always been — either a supersensuous chaos or a divine unity, which irresistibly attracts, and is either life or death to penetrate. Thus far, religion, philosophy and science seem to go hand in hand. The schools begin their vital battle only there.

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Science has become too complex to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of Substance, Universals, and Particulars. Little has changed except the vocabulary and the method.

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