314 Quotes About Error

We encounter regression to the mean almost every day of our lives. We should try to anticipate it, recognize it, and not be fooled by it.

To escape the error of salvation by works we have fallen into the opposite error of salvation without obedience. In our eagerness to get rid of the legalistic doctrine of works we have thrown out the baby with the bath and gotten rid of obedience as well.

When I saw that Moses’ version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth of all philosophers and started to investigate the secrets of nature.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub.(from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)

Assumed understanding based upon religious tradition is the breeding ground for error.

O glücklich, wer noch hoffen kann,aus diesem Meer des Irrtums aufzutauchen!Was man nicht weiß, das eben brauchte man,und was man weiß, kann man nicht brauchen.

Pour grands que soient les rois, ils sont ce que nous sommes: Ils peuvent se tromper comme les autres hommes.

Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error.

the Catch-22 of wrongology: in order to get rid of error, we would already need to be infallible.