“Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.”
Source: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections
“On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will
Reach her, about must, and about must goo.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne: & the Complete Poetry of William Blake
“Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.”
Source: Lectures and Essays
“Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.”
Source: Journey to the Centre of the Earth
“Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.”
Source: On aggression
“Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from heaven to man.”
Source: Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales
“The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.”
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
“The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.”
Source: Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy
“The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.”
Source: The Great Instauration
“The longest tyranny that ever sway'd
Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
Their free-born reason to the Stagirite [Aristotle],
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one suppli'd the state,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.”
Source: The Poems of John Dryden, Ed., with an Introduction and Textual Notes
