Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
Marriages which are contracted for love (so-called love-matches) have error for their father and need (necessity) for their mother.
Many errors, in truth, can be traced to this head, namely, that we do not apply names to things rightly.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.
It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.
Error is related to truth as sleep to waking.
But what after all are man’s truths? They are his irrefutable errors.
