Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth.

Once we allow ourselves to do evil so that some perceived good may follow, we allow ever greater evils for the sake of ever more questionable goods, until we consent to the greatest evils for the sake of mere trifles.

There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.

But Mr. Davy would not become a doctor, for a copy of Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry fell into his hands. Soon enough, Davy was discharged from Dr. Borlase's service because of his habit of performing explosive experiments.

Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth

Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.