Love truth, but pardon error.
Background photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash
What is tolerance? It is the endowment of humanity. We are all steeped in weakness and error; let us forgive each other our stupidities, that is the first law of nature.
I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.
Any man can make mistakes.
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
...that this fear of erring is really the error itself.
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
No one is more liable to make mistakes than he who acts only on reflection.
No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
All men are liable to error and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
We all err, but everybody errs differently.
It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.
The contempt of our nature is an error of our reason.
The only way to avoid error is ignorance.
When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
The opposite of falsehood is not truth, but doubt.
What man is without fault, and what king without weakness?
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Perhaps men entertain as many truths as falsehoods; have as many good qualities as bad; feel as many pleasures as pains. But we like to malign human nature, in order to try to raise ourselves above the common level, and to acquire for ourselves the respect of which we strive to rob it. We are so presumptuous, that we imagine we can separate our own personal interests from those of humanity in general, and malign the human race without implicating ourselves. This absurd vanity has filled books of philosophy with diatribes against human nature. Man is in disgrace with all thinkers, who rival one another in accusing him of depravity. But perhaps he may be about to rise again and recover all his virtues; nothing is permanent, and philosophy, like clothes, music, architecture, &c, has its vogues.
Obscurity is the realm of error.
The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities—perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.
Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
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Background photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash
