It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.

Microbes are doing things we didn't even know they could do 10 years ago.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.

It is in the country's best interest that Tony Blair rather than Michael Howard should form the next government.

It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.

The places that are most likely to grow trees for carbon sequestration are places where trees aren't growing now.

The petitioner's problem is to avoid Scylla without being drawn into Charybdis.

Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.

To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary... is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.

Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter mush. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

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.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, said an eminent scholar, have God for their Author, the Salvation of mankind for their end, and Truth without any mixture of error for their matter.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.

But there is another danger besetting your path. I mean the error of regarding your own capacities instead of your work, of putting self-consciousness in place of God.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.