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Error Quotes

Browse 152 quotes about Error.

Error Quotes

“Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.”

SuccessLearningStudyExperienceEfficientRightError
Book:The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
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“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old time, and regulate the sun; Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, And quitting sense call imitating God; As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, And turn their heads to imitate the sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule— Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!”

ReasonPoetryHumanityDoubtMankindHumilityEnlightenmentErrorFallibility
Book:An Essay on Man
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“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”

ReasonUniformityErrorFoolsHypocritesReligious ViolenceFree Inquiry
Book:Notes on the State of Virginia
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“The biggest mistake of a military man is to say that he is 'safe', as much as the biggest mistake of a police insider is to say that he is 'in control'. Both aren’t, never. Usually they say something like: 'it's only this time' or, 'I've done this before, nothing will happen to me'. Those sentences mean failure. Even Schwarzenegger found himself, later in his life, dealing with this brief thought. Seen a military man in your neighborhood? Tell him: write.”

ThoughtControlError
Author:Alan Maiccon
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“I’m not an expert on confidence, Brightness,” Shallan said, holding up a book and inspecting it critically. “But I’d like to think that I could recognize it if it were before me. I don’t think that’s the right word for books like this one from Mederia. They feel more arrogant than confident to me.” She sighed, setting the book aside. “To be honest, ‘arrogant’ doesn’t feel like quite the right word. It’s not specific enough.” “And what would be the right word, then?” “I don’t know. ‘Errorgant,’ perhaps.” Jasnah raised a skeptical eyebrow. “It means to be twice as certain as someone who is merely arrogant,” Shallan said, “while possessing only one-tenth the requisite facts.”

ConfidenceArroganceScholarshipErrorMisplaced Confidence
Book:The Way of Kings
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“Life no argument. - We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.”

LifeFaithKnowledgeError
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“Escogemos un camino u otro en cada punto de decisión de nuestra vida, y acabamos siendo la suma total de nuestras decisiones. Al rechazar nuestros errores, ganamos una seguridad a corto plazo, pero renunciamos a nuestra identidad con el proceso que nos permite transcender nuestras debilidades y tolerar nuestras vidas dolorosas y limitadas.”

CrisisErrorPensamientoEvolucionFracasoCreenciaAnomaliaAdaptacion
Book:Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief
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“You pay full price for each error. You pay full price for each fault You pay full price for each inaccuracy You pay full price for each omission You pay full price for each slip You pay full price for each blunder You pay full price for each miscalculation You pay full price for each misunderstanding You pay full price for each flaw You pay full price for each oversight You pay full price for each misinterpretation You pay full price for each fallacy.”

PayYouMisunderstandingFallacyPriceErrorOversight
Author:-human bot
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“Now pain, like the other evils, may of course recur because the cause of the first pain (disease, or an enemy) is still operative: but pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate. When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy. This distinction may be put the other way round. After an error you need not only to remove the causes (the fatigue or bad writing) but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required. Pain requires no such undoing. You may need to heal the disease which caused it, but the pain, once over, is sterile—whereas every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.”

PainErrorSterile
Author:C.S. Lewis
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“But the approach to truth is not easy. There is only one way towards it, the way through error. Only through our errors can we learn; and only he will learn who is ready to appreciate and even to cherish the errors of others as stepping stones towards truth, and who searches for his own errors: who tries to find them, since only when he has become aware of them can he free himself from them.”

TruthKnowledgeErrorKarl Popper
Book:In Search of a Better World
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“As all this suggests our relationship with evidence is seldom purely a cognitive one. Vilifying menstruating women bolstering anti-Muslim stereotypes murdering innocent citizens of Salem plainly evidence is almost always invariably a political social and moral issue as well. To take a particularly stark example consider the case of Albert Speer minister of armaments and war production during the Third Reich close friend to Adolf Hitler and highest-ranking Nazi official to ever express remorse for his actions. In his memoir Inside the Third Reich Speer candidly addressed his failure to look for evidence of what was happening around him. "I did not query a friend who told him not to visit Auschwitz I did not query Himmler I did not query Hitler " he wrote. "I did not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate for I did not want to know what was happening there... for fear of discovering something which might have made me turn away from my course. I had closed my eyes." Judge William Stoughton of Salem Massachusetts became complicit in injustice and murder by accepting evidence that he should have ignored. Albert Speer became complicit by ignoring evidence he should have accepted. Together they show us some of the gravest possible consequences of mismanaging the data around us and the vital importance of learning to manage it better. It is possible to do this: like in the U.S. legal system we as individuals can develop a fairer and more consistent relationship to evidence over time. By indirection Speer himself shows us how to begin. I did not query he wrote. I did not speak. I did not investigate. I closed my eyes. This are sins of omission sins of passivity and they suggest correctly that if we want to improve our relationship with evidence we must take a more active role in how we think must in a sense take the reins of our own minds. To do this we must query and speak and investigate and open our eyes. Specifically and crucially we must learn to actively combat our inductive biases: to deliberately seek out evidence that challenges our beliefs and to take seriously such evidence when we come across it.”

LifeErrorSins Of Omission
Book:Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
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“La humanidad ha pensando muy pocas veces en el bienestar colectivo, tanto durante los últimos siglos como en la actualidad. Entre los malos hábitos en que incurrimos, optamos repetidamente por los beneficios a corto plazo antes que por los beneficios a largo plazo.”

ErrorHumanosCivilizacionMetaObjetivoLargo PlazoCorto Plazo
Book:Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
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“During the play-act of life, errors can clash with our conventional truth and compel us to prepare new ground for another truth concept that will replace the old truth model. Be that as it may, let us fly on the wings of our inspiration, value the day, enjoy the now, and be ready because the new blueprint may only remain valid until it dies by natural death on its turn. (“Measuring space”)”

InspirationTruthEnjoyMeasuringErrorBlueprintNew GroundPlay Act
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.”

JudgingExpectationsBiasPublic HealthAssumptionsErrorScientific DiscoveryDisease ControlScientific ProgressYellow FeverYellow Fever EradicationMedical Progress
Book:Sanitation in Panama
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