Quotes About Error

Fiddling with a program until it appears to work is a reliable way of obtaining a program that almost works

Writing a history of the world is a ridiculous thing to do. The amount of information is too vast for any individual to absorb, the reading limitless and the likelihood of error immense. The only case for doing it, and for reading it, is that not having a sense of world history is even more ridiculous.

There has been more error propagated from the press in the last ten years than in a hundred years before,' was the jaundiced judgement of John Adams, second president of the United States, and a frequent victim of press vituperation and ridicule.9

On Liberty, 'that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.

if a presenter makes a factual error, it is your responsibility to go on record. Remember, you are being paid to attend the meeting, which is not meant to be a siesta in the midst of an otherwise busy day. Regard attendance at the meeting for what it is: work.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.

I'm generally pretty responsible and diligent, but people make mistakes.

It's a classic error in American discourse: the conflation of race with culture.

With people, if you see something you want to change, you can make the change immediately. And if that doesn't work, you can change it again half an hour later. You can't do that with a robot. They're terrible at experimenting.

For me, a story always goes out of a mistake. Somebody makes a mistake, and that becomes the story. Probably that explains why my series are kind of dark: because there's a problem to begin with.

With a chemical alarm, you're going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side.

I will always forgive a technical error, but I will never forgive the wrong attitude.

Humans have 3 percent human error, and a lot of companies can't afford to be wrong 3 percent of the time anymore, so we close that 3 percent gap with some of the technologies. The AI we've developed doesn't make mistakes.

Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager.

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

I regard the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the same as I do most other ancient books, in which there is some truth, a great deal of error, considerable barbarism and a most plentiful lack of good sense.

blundered straight into the table nest: the

Laughable error and profound discovery are born of the same freedom.

Young people err through ignorance; but older people err through oblivion to dramatic but simple truths, learned and forgotten a hundred times. The ignorance of the young has the inviting vacancy of the outdoors; but the oblivion of the old is a noxious void behind a sneer of wisdom.

Forgiveness is also important because, as a study of surgical errors found, "when a subordinate sees his technical errors are forgiven, he recognizes there is no incentive to hide them. He is less likely, therefore, to compound his problems by attempting to treat problems that are over his head for fear of superordinate reprisal.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.