Errors Quotes - Page 34

• It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.

  Stephen Harper

  Mass Destruction, Iraq, Invasion

  English leaders' debate, October 2, 2008.

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• It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.

  Aleister Crowley

  Crush, Country, Sex

  Aleister Crowley (2015). “Moonchild”, p.213, Booklassic

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• Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

  Richard Russo

  Foundation, Stories, Way

  Richard Russo (2010). “That Old Cape Magic”, p.85, Random House

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• The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

  Alan Kay

  Ocean, Technology, Men

  Interview with Andrew Binstock, www.drdobbs.com. July 10, 2012.

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• In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communism, but any political movement which implicitly relies on purely utilitarian ethics, must become a victim to the same fatal error. It is a fallacy as naïve as a mathematical teaser, and yet its consequences lead straight to Goya's Disasters, to the reign of the guillotine, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, or the cellars of the Lubianka.

  Arthur Koestler

  Political, Single Life, Goya

  Arthur Koestler (1952). “Arrow in the blue: an autobiography”

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• Be the best. No negativity. No weakness. No acquiescence to fear or disaster. No errors of ignorance. No evasion to reality

  Jeff Buckley

  Ignorance, Reality, Negativity

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• We try to solve the problem by rushing through the design process so that enough time is left at the end of the project to uncover the errors that were made because we rushed through the design process

  Glenford Myers

  Rushing, Design Process, Trying

  Glenford J. Myers (1978). “Composite/structured design”, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company

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• People still retain the errors of their childhood, their nation, and their age, long after they have accepted the truths needed to refute them.

  Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

  Long, People, Childhood

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• When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Wisdom, Selfish, Passion

  On the Constitution (1787)

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• I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: 'Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.' … The twenty-five percent is for error.

  Linus Pauling

  Golden, Twenties, Do Unto Others

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• If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.

  Paul Krugman

  Simple, Years, United States

  Paul Krugman (2010). “The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. 'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Thinking, St Francis Of Assisi, Doubt

  Margaret Thatcher (1997). “The collected speeches of Margaret Thatcher”, HarperCollins

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• All corporatism - even when practised in societies where hard work, enterprise and cooperation are as highly valued as in Korea - encourages inflexibility, discourages individual accountability, and risks magnifying errors by concealing them.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Hard Work, Korea, Accountability

  "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World". Book by Margaret Thatcher, April 16, 2002.

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• Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, popularity or the amount of its yearly offerings.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Offering, Judging, Church

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• What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

  Diane Ravitch

  Running, Thinking, Views

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• An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.

  Primo Levi

  Enemy, Way, Cease

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Reawakening”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

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• I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Punishment, Would Be, Cry

  Thomas Bernhard (2010). “The Loser: A Novel”, p.75, Vintage

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• A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter.

  Henri Poincare

  Produce, Latter, Enormous

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• When mankind was in its infancy, steeped in uncertainty, ignorance, and error, was it possible to foresee what system it would adopt for preservation.

  Simon Bolivar

  Ignorance, Preservation, Infancy

  Simón Bolívar (1951). “Selected Writings: 1810-1822. Bibliography (p. [xxxvi]-xxxviii)”

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• It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Believe, Investing, Economics

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1995). “A Journey Through Economic Time: A Firsthand View”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
  free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Passion, Self, Confusion

  Sri Aurobindo (1995). “Essays on the Gita”, p.107, Lotus Press

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• As much as you love to finish games and all that kind of stuff, at the same time as a starting pitcher you hate to come out of a game where your closer has no margin for error, ... So at least with one guy on, Braden's got a little margin to make a mistake.

  Tom Glavine

  Hate, Mistake, Games

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• The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth cannot be increased or its error diminished by its acceptance by the lexicographer. Each definition must stand on its own merits.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Acceptance, Lexicographer, May

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “Instead of a Book”

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• Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Past, Years, Stupidity

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “Snow”, p.282, Faber & Faber

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• I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions...Let [the Papists] assure themselves, that, as I am a friend of their persons, if they be good subjects, so am I a vowed enemy, and do denounce mortal war to their errors.

  King James I

  Mother, War, Enemy

  On Roman Catholics, at the opening of parliament, 1604.

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