Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Error

Errors such as are but acorns in our younger brows grow oaks in our older heads, and become inflexible.

But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has farther to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.

Misunderstanding and inattention create more uneasiness in the world than deception and artifice, or, at least, their consequences are more universal.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for Error is always talkative.

Every error is a stain to the beauty of nature, for which cause it blusheth thereat, but glorieth in the contrary.

The cause of error is ignorance what restraints and limitations all principles have in regard of the matter whereunto they are applicable.

When men’s affections do frame their opinions, they are in defence of error more earnest, a great deal, than, for the most part, sound believers in the maintenance of truth, apprehending according to the nature of that evidence which scripture yieldeth.

To be indifferent whether we embrace falsehood or truth is the great road to error.

Ignorance, with indifferency for truth, is nearer to it than opinion with ungrounded inclination, which is the great source of error.

The foundation of error will lie in wrong measures of probability; as the foundation of vice in wrong measures of good.

To a wrong hypothesis may be reduced the errors that may be occasioned by a true hypothesis but not rightly understood: there is nothing more familiar than this.

One devious step at first stepping out frequently leads a person into a wilderness of doubt and error.