Quotes About Recantation

In one of those bitter ironies, at the end of his life Marr recanted his antisemitic accusations and, in a final essay entitled "Testament of an Antisemite," acknowledged that the faults he attributed to the Jews were, in fact, the result of the Industrial Revolution and the political debates of the times.2 His remorse notwithstanding, the damage had already been done.)

Hilbert had written of Galileo that in his recantation 'he was not an idiot. Only an idiot could believe that scientific truth needs martyrdom – that may be necessary in religion, but scientific results prove themselves in time.' But this was not a trial of scientific truth.

I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), a celebrated polymath and an early advocate of the Copernican theory of the universe, on charges of holding erroneous opinions about various aspects of Catholic dogma, including the divinity of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the virginity of Mary. Bruno had offered only a halfhearted recantation rather than the abject confession that the Inquisition always demanded, and he was burned alive as an unrepentant heretic.

A hasty judgment is a first step to recantation.

I while yet a youth wrote in a quite large volume three books of magical things, which I called De occulta philosophia , in which whatever was then erroneous because of my curious youth, now, more cautious, I wish to retract by this recantation, for formerly I spent much time and goods on these vanities.