Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith–faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Eric Hoffer
About This Quote

The author of this quote, Henry Adams, was speaking about the modern world. The people of his day were so blind, so arrogant and so sure of their own superiority over other people. They had no idea what they were doing to the rest of the world. Adams was an extremely intelligent man and he stood firmly against the many wrongs that were being done at that time.

He believed that people should not be allowed to do whatever they want to do. He stood by the idea that things needed to be controlled rather than left up to chance. He also believed in the goodness of humanity and how science could make us all better people.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw
  2. No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere. - Sigmund Freud
  3. We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. - Alan Turing
  4. ..[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody... - Karl Marx
  5. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. - Frank Zappa
More Quotes By Eric Hoffer
  1. Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
  2. There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
  3. The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
  4. The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
  5. We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.
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