The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?

He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.

The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.

Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.

It will appear evident upon attentive consideration that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality may best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests and cooperation in labor.

Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?

We have seen that no religion stands on the basis of things known; none bounds its horizon within the field of human observation; and, therefore, as it can never present us with indisputable facts, so must it ever be at once a source of error and contention.

Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.

Man has been adjudged a social animal.

Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us.

The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies.

Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

We hear of the wealth of nations, of the powers of production, of the demand and supply of markets, and we forget that these words mean no more, if they mean any thing, then the happiness, and the labor, and the necessities of men.

Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.

Awaken its powers, and it will respect itself.

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.

Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.

To me, error analysis is the sweet spot for improvement.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

On health care, virtually every political error that could be made was made.

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

Truth is immortal; error is mortal.

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter.

The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

To the extent that '60s guys own things, yes... but I don't have the publishing, just like most '60s guys, and that was an error, you know... part ownership in publishing was the kind of era that started a little bit later, when real businessmen started to manage artists.

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don't think the press has understood me.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

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.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

How is an error possible in mathematics?

This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity.

Where we're not wrong or where the cost of settling is so much that it is totally disproportionate to the harm or the error that we made, we're not going to settle.

I did it the stupid way, through trial and error.