Errors Quotes - Page 18

• Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Revolution, Enlightening

  4 Copy quote

• I made a fatal error thinking he could save me.

  Jenny Downham

  Thinking, Made, Save Me

  Jenny Downham (2007). “Before I Die”, David Fickling Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.

  Carl Sagan

  Heart, Exercise, Ideas

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.51, Ballantine Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lying, Love Is, Fire

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Country, Children, Pain

  "The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.

  Christopher Morley

  Book, Hunger, Humans

  Christopher Morley (2013). “The Haunted Bookshop”, p.10, Melville House

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Error is better than apathy. Error can be corrected in time to change the outcome. Apathy is seldom corrected until it is too late.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Apathy, Too Late, Outcomes

  9 Copy quote

• Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Believe, Degrees, Definitions

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.52, Harvard University Press

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Mistake, Writing, People

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.10, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.

  Thomas Szasz

  Whales, Feelings, Disease

  9 Copy quote

• Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen.

  Paul Bowles

  Years, Another Year, Kind

  Paul Bowles (1979). “Collected stories, 1939-1976”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

  Nick Harkaway

  Swings, Tree, Branches

  "The Gone-Away World". Book by Nick Harkaway, June 2008.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Giving, Wish, Satisfaction

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The World As Will And Idea: 3 vols in 1 [unabridged]”, p.59, Kshetra Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yes,I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.

  Daniel Quinn

  Civilization, Trials, Way

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.110, Bantam

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not find truth groveling through error.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Groveling

  12 Copy quote

• Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.

  Julia Glass

  Believe, Cutting, Cake

  8 Copy quote

• When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Regret, Mistake, Judgement

  9 Copy quote

• Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time.

  Michael Chabon

  Baseball, Loss, Games

  4 Copy quote

• Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics.

  Barry Hughart

  Careers, Way, Empty

  5 Copy quote

• Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.

  Linus Pauling

  Religion, Morality, Do Unto Others

  40 Copy quote

• Dagny, we can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose remains the same and the forms are ours to make.

  Ayn Rand

  Purpose, May, Form

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.472, Hamilton Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Perhaps Love, Suffering

  4 Copy quote

• Interestingly, God's remedy for Elijah's depression was not a refresher course in theology but food and sleep... Before God spoke to him at all, Elijah was fed twice and given a good chance to sleep. Only then, and very gently, did God confront him with his error. This is always God's way. Having made us as human beings, He respects our humanness and treats us with integrity. That is, He treats us true to the truth of who we are. It is human beings and not God who have made spirituality impractical.

  Os Guinness

  Integrity, Sleep, Humanness Is

  41 Copy quote

• A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.

  Rene Daumal

  Knives, Blades

  Rene Daumal (2004). “Mount Analogue”, p.37, The Overlook Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off.

  Warren Zevon

  Years, Physicians, Might

  7 Copy quote