Best Errors Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 32

Source: Love, Life & Work: Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others

“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.”

“The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States ... formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities.”

States Government Community Party Acting Liberty Independent Errors Libertarian Assumption Libertarianism Sovereign Compact

Book:REPORTS AND PUBLIC LETTERS

Source: REPORTS AND PUBLIC LETTERS

“Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories.”

“Is it not evident, in these last hundred years (when the Study of Philosophy has been the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendome) that almost a new Nature has been revealed to us? that more errours of the School have been detected, more useful Experiments in Philosophy have been made, more Noble Secrets in Opticks, Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, discover'd, than in all those credulous and doting Ages from Aristotle to us? So true it is that nothing spreads more fast than Science, when rightly and generally cultivated.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Dryden (Illustrated)

“Error has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it.”

Men Has Beens Art Made Science Religion Knowledge Pure Capable Errors Sensitive Religion And Art

Book:Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two

Source: Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

Knows Helping Science Death Dies Turns Term Hours Animal Knowledge Knowing Errors Painful Dare Certainty Wiser Woe Painful Death

Book:Our Eternity

Source: Our Eternity

“But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.”

Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes

“The body of science is not, as it is sometimes thought, a huge coherent mass of facts, neatly arranged in sequence, each one attached to the next by a logical string. In truth, whenever we discover a new fact it involves the elimination of old ones. We are always, as it turns out, fundamentally in error.”

Sometimes Facts Body Science Turns Next Huge Mass Logic Accounts Errors Logical Strings Sequence Elimination

Author:Lewis Thomas

“Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.”

Philosophy Science Ignorance Accounts Errors Theology Ignorant Disagreement

Author:Mortimer Adler

“Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable error. ... It is wonderful that Buffon who lived so much in the country at his noble seat should have fallen into such a blunder I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.”

Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition Never Before Published: the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished

“If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.”

Ifs May Science Theory Mathematics Errors Definitions Ridiculous Conclusion Mathematical Rigor

Author:Richard P. Feynman

“A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error.”

Truth Science Truth Is Errors

Book:Poor Richard's almanac for 1850-52

Source: Poor Richard's almanac for 1850-52

“Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.”