Errors Quotes - Page 32

• Inborn errors of metabolism.

  Archibald Garrod

  Metabolism, Biochemistry

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• A scientist strives to understand the work of Nature. But with our insufficient talents as scientists, we do not hit upon the truth all at once. We must content ourselves with tracking it down, enveloped in considerable darkness, which leads us to make new mistakes and errors. By diligent examination, we may at length little by little peel off the thickest layers, but we seldom get the core quite free, so that finally we have to be satisfied with a little incomplete knowledge.

  Torbern Bergman

  Mistake, Knowledge, Science

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• Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, therefore, from appearances which are particular, care must be taken how we generalize; we should be cautious not to attribute to nature, laws which may perhaps be only of our own invention.

  James Hutton

  Taken, Science, Men

  James Hutton (1788*). “Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. (From. the Trans., Roy. soc. of Edinb.).”, p.65

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• Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Science, Trying

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• [Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Ignorance, Science, Order

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• There is no such thing as absolute truth and absolute falsehood. The scientific mind should never recognise the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. It should carefully weigh the chances of truth and error and grade each in its proper position along the line joining absolute truth and absolute error.

  Henry Augustus Rowland

  Science, Perfect, Mind

  Henry Augustus Rowland (1902). “The physical papers of Henry Augustus Rowland ...: John Hopkins University, 1876-1901”

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• It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.

  Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

  Truth, Science, Progress

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• Truth is not by nature free - nor error servile - but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power.

  Michel Foucault

  Truth, Science, Relation

  "The History of Sexuality, Volume I: The Will to Knowledge". Book by Michel Foucault, 1978.

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• A great error is more easily propagated than a great truth, because it is easier to believe, than to reason, and because people prefer the marvels of romances to the simplicity of history.

  Charles-Francois Dupuis

  Believe, People, Simplicity

  Charles François Dupuis (2016). “The Origin of all Religious Worship”, p.270, Lulu.com

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• In fact, current cosmological observations indicate that the average density of matter and energy in the universe is equal, within measurement errors, to the critical density for which the total energy of the universe was exactly zero at the beginning.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Zero, Average, Religion

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• Of course, if you photograph the behavior of women and men at a particular time in history, in a particular situation, you will capture differences. But the error lies in inferring that a snapshot is a lasting picture. What women and men do at a moment in time tells us nothing about what women and men are in some unvarying sense - or about what they can be.

  Carol Tavris

  Lying, Philosophical, Men

  Carol Tavris (1993). “Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex”, Touchstone

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• As for our pupils talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through it and have no guide but reason. Make him understand that confessing an error which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness and rancour are vulgar qualities, visible in common souls whereas to think again, to change one's mind and to give up a bad case on the heat of the argument are rare qualities showing strength and wisdom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Giving Up, Integrity, Educational

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• It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Philosophical, Animal, Vegetarianism

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• Discipline can only be obtained when all the officers are imbued with the sense of their awful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or to praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.

  George S. Patton

  Country, War, Men

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• Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.

  Nikola Tesla

  Kings, Ignorance, Men

  The New York Times, (p. 23, c.8), July 11, 1935.

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• This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, not tolerate error as long as reason is left free to combat it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Truth, War, Long

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state”, p.196

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• While still sixteen I am put in charge of a class of forty children who are two, three or four years younger than I. I fall in love with them. They are my possession, my mob whose forty minds, under my flashy and domineering control, are to become one, a mind unsullied by errors, unmarked by blots, contaminated by misplaced originalities outside the curriculum, and as full of facts as a pomegranate seed.

  Hal Porter

  Love, Children, Fall

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• Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Politics, Convince

  Thomas Jefferson, Martin Alfred Larson (1981). “Jefferson, magnificent populist”, Devin-Adair Pub

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• Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Politics, Truth Is, Force

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1771 - 1779, the Summary View, and the Declaration of Independence”, p.267, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Truth, Political, Enemy

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• Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Politics, Weapons, Conflict

  "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" (1779)

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• Without error, there is no brilliancy.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Chess

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• If I had it my way, I would have just kept it short forever. Of course, men like long hair. There's no two ways about it. The majority of the boys around me were like, 'Why did you do that? That's such an error.' And I was like, 'Well, honestly, I don't really care what you think!' I've never felt so confident as I did with short hair - I felt really good in my own skin.

  Emma Watson

  Boyfriend, Kissing, Boys

  "Emma Watson Talks Style, Dating, and Life After Harry Potter in Her October 2012 Glamour Interview". Interview with Emma Rosenblum, www.glamour.com. September 3, 2012.

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• "a fatal and perhaps fateful error of judgment" "...this was the last chance for the United Nations to get a grip on themselves and apply the principles of their Charter"

  Alec Douglas-Home

  War, Principles, Lasts

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• The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . . . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.

  Simone Weil

  Military, War, Fighting

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