This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The truth is perilous never to the true, nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, and to the false, error and truth alike, error is worse than ignorance.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.
Error |
Wrapt up in error is the human mind, and human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how long the present shall endure?
Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi
O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity.
Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi
How full of error is the judgment of mankind! They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons.
People do not reach the truth in all its aspects, and will not fall into the error in all its aspects.
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabbi Judah used to say: “Be careful in teaching, for error in teaching amounts to deliberate sin.”
Error |
For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
Science develops best when its concepts and conclusions are integrated into the broader human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value. Scientists cannot, therefore, hold themselves entirely aloof from the sorts of issues dealt with by philosophers and theologians. By devoting to these issues something of the energy and care they give to their research in science, they can help others realize more fully the human potentialities of their discoveries. They can also come to appreciate for themselves that these discoveries cannot be a genuine substitute for knowledge of the truly ultimate. Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
Care | Culture | Energy | Error | Knowledge | Meaning | Religion | Research | Science | World |
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange
Ours is but a borrowed existence, freely given us by God, and He keeps us in existence because indeed He wills it so. Ours is but a goodness in which there is so much infirmity and even degradation; there is so much error in our knowledge. This thought, while serving to make us humble, brings home to us by contrast the infinite majesty of God. And then if it is a question of others and no longer of ourselves, if we have suffered disillusionment about our neighbor whom we had believed to be better and wiser, let us remember that he too has suffered disillusionment about us; let us remember that he too is perhaps better than we are, and that whatever is our own as coming from ourselves-our deficiencies and failings—is inferior to everything our neighbor has from God. This is the foundation of humility in our relations with others. Lastly, we must admit that the disillusionments we ourselves experience, or which others experience through us, in view of the radical imperfection of the creature, are permitted that we may aspire more ardently to a knowledge and love of Him who is the truth and the life, whom we shall some day see as He sees Himself. We shall then understand the meaning of those words of St.Catherine of Siena: “The living, practical knowledge of our own wretchedness and the knowledge of God’s majesty are inseparable in their increase. They are like the lowest and highest points on a circle that is ever expanding.
Better | Contrast | Day | Disillusionment | Error | Existence | Experience | Humility | Imperfection | Knowledge | Love | Meaning | Question | Truth | Wills | Words | Understand |
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.
Absurd | Error | Literature | Pleasure |
Whence then come my errors? They come from the sole fact that since the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but extend it also to things which I do not understand: and as the will is of itself indifferent to these, it easily falls into error and sin, and chooses the evil for the good, or the false for the true.
René Margritte, fully René François Ghislain Magritte
One night, I woke up in a room in which a cage with a bird sleeping in it had been placed. A magnificent error caused me to see an egg in the cage, instead of the vanished bird. I then grasped a new and astonishing poetic secret, for the shock which I experienced had been provoked precisely by the affinity of two objects -- the cage and the egg -- to each other, whereas previously this shock had been caused by my bringing together two objects that were unrelated.
Error |
It is proper to observe, that even in this sense of our country, that love of it which is our duty, does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government. Were this implied, the love of their country would be the duty of only a very small part of mankind; for there are few countries that enjoy the advantage of laws and governments which deserve to be preferred. To found, therefore, this duty on such a preference, would be to found it on error and delusion. It is however a common delusion. There is the same partiality in countries, to themselves, that there is in individuals. All our attachments should be accompanied, as far as possible, with right opinions. We are too apt to confine wisdom and virtue within the circle of our own acquaintance and party. Our friends, our country, and, in short, everything related to us, we are disposed to overvalue. A wise man will guard himself against this delusion. He will study to think of all things as they are, and not suffer any partial effections to blind his understanding. In other families there may be as much worth as in our own. In other circles of friends there may be as much wisdom; and in other countries as much of all that deserves esteem; but, notwithstanding this, our obligation to love our own families, friends, and country, and to seek, in the first place, their good, will remain the same.
Acquaintance | Duty | Error | Love | Man | Obligation | Partiality | Preference | Right | Sense | Study | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Worth | Friends | Think | Value |
The ideological clash between Keynesians and neoliberals (represented to a certain degree in the escalating all-out warfare between the US Democratic and Republican political parties) will no doubt continue and even intensify. But the ensuing heat of battle will yield little light if both philosophies conceal the same fundamental errors. One such error is the belief that economies can and should perpetually grow.
If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination.
Error | Incompetence |