Errors Quotes - Page 38

• Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.

  James Harvey Robinson

  Self, Atheism, Groups

  James Harvey Robinson (1939). “The Mind in the Making”

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• How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline: the sociology of error.

  Steven Johnson

  Intelligent, Discipline, People

  Steven Johnson (2006). “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World”, p.27, Penguin

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• But there is another danger besetting your path. I mean the error of regarding your own capacities instead of your work, of putting self-consciousness in place of God.

  Joseph Barber Lightfoot

  Mean, Self, Path

  Joseph Barber Lightfoot (Bishop of Durham) (1890). “Ordination addresses and counsels to clergy”

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• Spontaneous love admits errors, hesitations and human failings. It can be tested and repaired.

  Nancy Friday

  Failing, Spontaneous, Hesitation

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• If you make an error, use it as a stepping stone to a new idea you might not have otherwise discovered.

  Roger von Oech

  Ideas, Use, Stones

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• If you would reform the world from its errors and vices, begin by enlisting the mothers.

  Charles Simmons

  Mother, Vices, Reform

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• An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

  Frances Wright

  May, Opinion, Moral

  Frances Wright (1850). “A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum”, p.166

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• Nowadays the big Hollywood studios only make about three movies a year, and they cost about $200 million each. There's no room for error in that, and not a lot of room, I would think, for free expression.

  Robbie Coltraine

  Thinking, Expression, Years

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• Most of the worst errors I made in my life came from forgetting to act small.

  Felix Dennis

  Forget, Made, Worst

  Felix Dennis (2008). “How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets”, p.96, Penguin

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• Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Failure, Honest

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• Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.

  Ernest Gellner

  Ideas, Care, Caution

  Ernest Gellner (2005). “Words and Things: An Examination Of, and an Attack On, Linguistic Philosophy”, p.139, Psychology Press

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• There are no mistakes, there are only correctable errors. There are no errors, there are only alternate programs.

  John C. Lilly

  Mistake, Program

  John C. Lilly, Antonietta Lilly (1976). “The Dyadic Cyclone: The Autobiography of a Couple”

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• Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort. And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited.

  Mary Baker Eddy

  Armor, Safe, Good Thoughts

  Mary Baker Eddy (1964). “The Christian Science Journal”

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• Technical civilization has made a great error in not suppressing death, the only human reality still intact

  Jacques Ellul

  Reality, Civilization, Made

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• Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.

  William Zinsser

  Marketing, Vagueness, Jargon

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• A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Matter, Belief, Conviction

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.226, Modern Library

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• If the errors of my life have profited me one great truth it is this: believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow pulled from his own bow. It is the single universal trait which the great of this earth have all shared, while the shadows are fraught with ghosts who roam the winds with mournful wails of regret on their lips. Believe as if your life depended upon it, for indeed it does.

  Richard Paul Evans

  Stars, Regret, Believe

  Richard Paul Evans (2000). “The Locket”, p.408, Simon and Schuster

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• It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Book, Believe, Heart

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

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• The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mistake, Virtue, Disinterested

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.8, Hayes Barton Press

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• There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance.

  George Gillespie

  Ignorance, Men, Understanding

  George Gillespie (1846). “The Presbyterian's Armoury”

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• 'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

  Carl Sagan

  Truth, Book, Opportunity

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

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• In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted.

  David Brin

  Law, Trial And Error, Tools

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• Up until the late unpleasantness of the Civil war, then, the right of secession was more or less taken for granted in many quarters, and there has never been any amendment or even a Supreme Court decision saying it's improper. - Samual Francis, Secession May Be Legal But Not Expedient, Conservative Chronicles
  If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Taken, Safety

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• It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error. It is better to speak the truth that hurts and then heals, than falsehood that comforts and then kills.

  Adrian Rogers

  Hurt, Comfort, Speak

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• One of the most serious errors, if not the most serious error, committed by colonial powers in Africa, may have been to ignore or underestimate the cultural strength of African peoples.

  Amilcar Cabral

  Serious, May, Underestimate

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