Quotes About Error

Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.

Every error, of whatever kind, is a consequence of degeneration of instinct, disgregation of will: one has thereby virtually defined the bad. Everything good is instinct – and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection, the god is typically distinguished from the hero (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity).

The discovery of the laws of numbers was made on the basis of an error already predominant in the earliest times, that several things might be identical (but actually there are no identical things), or that there are at least things (but there is no 'thing'). The assumption of multiplicity is always presupposes that there is something that occurs multiple times: but this is precisely where error already holds sway, already we invent beings, unities that do not exist.

That is the greatest error ever committed, the most disastrous error on earth: believing that in the forms of reason, we had in our possession a criterion of reality, whereas we had them in order to gain mastery over reality, in order to misunderstand it in a shrewd way... — And behold, the world became false precisely because of the qualities which constitute its reality: change, becoming, multiplicity, opposition, strife, war.

Minds festooned with error, barnacled with bias, swollen with delusions of godhead.

Computers can deliver nuclear explosions to precisely anywhere on earth. A lightning bolt is made entirely of error.

The team that wins makes minimum mistakes, and the one which loses, that one makes more mistakes than the other team.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

The wisest of the wise may err.

I missed a lot of decisions. At the time of making such a decision, there was no doubt in my mind as to its correctness. However, a second or two later I felt that I erred and wished I could change my original ruling.

Therefore let men withdraw themselves from errors; and laying aside corrupt superstitions, let them acknowledge their Father and Lord, whose excellence cannot be estimated, nor His greatness perceived, nor His beginning comprehended.

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

Our great cultural error is to assume that 'truth' arrives only through reductive theories.

We have seen that no religion stands on the basis of things known; none bounds its horizon within the field of human observation; and, therefore, as it can never present us with indisputable facts, so must it ever be at once a source of error and contention.

If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.

I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.

The modern mind has fallen into the heresy of democracy—that is, the ruinous error vox populi vox dei, that an abstract People are divine, and that truth issues from the ballot-box.

It's hard to get motivated fixing a compile-time syntax error when you can buy a powder that turns a house into a monster.

Todos los hombres pueden caer en un error; pero sólo los necios perseveran en él