Topic

Errors

Errors in this collection are distinguished from mistakes by their relationship to belief: an error is something you held to be true that was not. Goethe's none-are-more-hopelessly-enslaved-than-those-who-falsely-believe-they-are-free is the political application: the deepest errors are about one's own condition. Einstein's tried-and-new appears here as under mistakes, because the collections overlap — but the emphasis under errors is on correction rather than on learning. Jefferson's error-needs-government-support is the epistemological claim: true statements are self-sustaining; false ones require enforcement. His delay-is-preferable-to-error is the procedural corollary. Maugham on love as a dirty trick is the biological error argument: the species deceives individuals by making reproduction feel like destiny. The observation that college marriage errors pursue you into the job market is the practical warning. What the collection argues is that errors are not moral failures but cognitive ones — and the remedy is not guilt but revision.

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It is wrong always, everywhere and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Source: The Ethics of Belief

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free

Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong

From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own

Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society

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

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him

Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new

Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

To err is human; to forgive, divine