Errors Quotes - Page 38

• A good rule of thumb is if you've made it to 35 and your job still requires you wear a nametag, you've probably made a serious vocational error.

  Dennis Miller

  Jobs, Funny Work, Thumbs

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• One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail.

  Frederick Douglass

  Disappointment, People, Justice

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• It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words.

  Galileo Galilei

  Should Have, Would Be, Way

  Letter to Benedetto Castelli, 1613.

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• We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Observers, Objectives

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.7, Macmillan

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• Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.

  Amos Tversky

  Wisdom, Mistake, Fall

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• Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Math, America, Accomplishment

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.171, Random House

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• Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

  Tim Harford

  Struggle, Mean, Work Out

  Tim Harford (2011). “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure”, p.16, Hachette UK

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• Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings.

  Al-Ghazali

  Believe, Writing, Men

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• God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Lord, Adam

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1857). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.300

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• To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical.

  Georges Canguilhem

  Persist, Humans, Diabolical

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• The Administration has made critical mistakes and errors in judgment leading up to the war in Iraq. The President refuses to acknowledge these mistakes, and thus, no corrective action has been taken to prevent these problems from happening again.

  Zoe Lofgren

  Mistake, War, Taken

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• We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  War, Practice, Ideas

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• In some ways, getting away from the headquarters and having a little time to reflect allows you to find errors in your strategy. You get to rethink things. Often, that helps me correct a mistake that I made or someone else is about to make.

  Larry Ellison

  Inspirational, Mistake, Littles

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• In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Skills, Ducks

  1997 Chairman's Letter, www.berkshirehathaway.com. February 27, 1998.

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• But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

  Adin Ballou

  Crush, Army, Careers

  Adin Ballou (1848). “Christian non-resistance, in all its important bearings, illustrated and defended”, p.87

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• Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

  David Brin

  Accountability, Criticism, Antidote

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• In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

  David Brin

  Mistake, Self, Deception

  David Brin (1999). “The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us To Choose Between Privacy And Freedom?”, p.10, Basic Books

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• When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

  Richard Ford

  Heart, Loss, Thinking

  Richard Ford (2010). “Wildlife”, p.18, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Horizon, Lasts, Landmarks

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• There we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Shadow, Telescopes, Measurement

  Quoted in Dennis Overbye Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos (1991).

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• Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty and free grace; Arminianism emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts the saving grace to the elect; the other extends it to all men on the condition of faith. Both are right in what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. If one important truth is pressed to the exclusion of another truth of equal importance, it becomes an error, and loses its hold upon the conscience. The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.

  Philip Schaff

  Christian, Responsibility, Men

  Philip Schaff, David Schley Schaff (1984). “History of the Christian Church, Volume 8 Modern Christianity the Swiss Reformation”, Eerdmans Pub Co

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• Life has puffed and blown itself into a summer day, and clouds and spring billow over the heavens as if calendars were a listing of mathematical errors.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Summer, Spring, Clouds

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• There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Fall, Race

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil”, p.8, HarperCollins UK

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• The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maidens?

  Umberto Eco

  Eye, Age, Vices

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.147, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.

  David Hilbert

  Believe, Math, Simplicity

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