To Err Is Human Quotes

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To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope (An Essay On Criticism)
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mahatma Gandhi
To err is human - but it feels divine.
Mae West
I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
Agatha Christie (Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41))
To err is human, to purr is feline.
Robert Byrne (The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said)
errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.
Seneca
The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.
Erica Jong
To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
To err is human, to forgive divine. (Acheron) I don’t ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I only ask for a chance to show you now that I’m not the fool I was once. (Styxx)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Second Chances (Dark-Hunter #7.1))
To err is human, to forgive is divine... but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I’m going to err towards beating you with this stick.
Mark Lawrence (Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1))
To err is human
Alexander Pope
Sometimes my need to love hurts-- myself, my family, my cause. Is there a cure? Of course. But I refuse. Refuse to stop loving, to stop caring. To avoid those tears, that pain...To err on the side of passion is human and right and the only way I'll live.
Jon Krakauer
To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical.
Georges Canguilhem (Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences)
To err is human — and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Robert Orben
to err is human
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1))
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old time, and regulate the sun; Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, And quitting sense call imitating God; As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, And turn their heads to imitate the sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule— Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Alexander Pope (An Essay on Man)
When I was a kid, they had a saying, 'to err is human but to really fuck it up takes a computer.’
Benjamin R. Smith (Atlas)
To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.
Benjamin Franklin
Exactly. To err is to be human, irrational or not. And while some mistakes are bigger than others, if we learn from them, we become better people. Even if we have spiders in our brains.
T.J. Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1))
It is not human to be wise,’ said Blood. ‘It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy.
Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood)
To err is human, to forgive is divine.
Jo Nesbø (The Son)
She hands me her phone and points to a post on my timeline from Yale University: To err is human @BronwynRojas. We look forward to receiving your application.
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1))
So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don't nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we will lose control. Let go of that unfounded fear and give your child permission to be human. We all have days like that. None of us are perfect, and we must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves. All of the punishments you could throw at them will not stamp out their humanity, for to err is human, and we all do it sometimes.
Rebecca Eanes (The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting)
To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it’s too late is to become divinely fucked up.
Jonathan Tropper (The Book of Joe)
He went on to say that conclusions arrived at through reasoning had very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act diametrically against them time and time again, and have as the only explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
Carlos Castaneda (The Fire from Within)
To err is human; to forgive, divine
Alexander Pope
Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.
Richard Bachman (Rage)
It is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Your life," she corrected. "It's the nature of existence. To err is human. We screw up, and then screw up some more.
Amanda Sellet (By the Book)
To err is human, whether we are religious, atheist, or agnostic.
Newton Lee (The Transhumanism Handbook)
To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.
Hubert H. Humphrey
To err is human, to admit it is divine. It is absolutely human to commit mistakes. To admit, without any guilt—you are simply admitting your humanity by admitting your mistakes—brings a transformation in your being. Something of the divine, something of the beyond starts opening up.
Osho (Mindfulness in the Modern World: How Do I Make Meditation Part of Everyday Life? (Osho Life Essentials))
To a misogynist: To err is woman.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To err his human, to stroll is Parisian.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
not only do all human beings err, but they err frequently and in predictable, patterned ways.
Atul Gawande (Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science)
Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope (An Essay On Criticism)
Alison's grandfather told her,'To err is human, to forgive divine
Diane Griffith (A Moment to Remember: to Forgive, Divine)
To err is human, to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope
To err is human- I'm uncomfortable around gods.
Hugh Prather (Notes to Myself)
To err is human, to forgive divine,
Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan)
So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.
Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener)
the only difference between a wise man and a fool was in the magnitude of his mistakes. To err was human, and the smarter and more powerful you were, the greater the scope of your screwup.
Tom Clancy (Red Rabbit (Jack Ryan, #2))
When ordinary human beings err, it is sad, but when leaders do, it haunts us for generations.
Gurcharan Das (India Unbound)
My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.
Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener)
The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.
Donald A. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
To err is to be human, irrational or not. And while some mistakes are bigger than others, if we learn from them, we become better people. Even if we have spiders in our brains.
T.J. Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1))
For everyone who's afraid of making mistakes. To err is to be human. Give yourself some grace.
Emily McIntire (Crossed (Never After, #5))
To err once is human; to err twice is idiotic.
Nita Prose (The Mystery Guest (Molly the Maid, #2))
To err is human; to forgive divine. Alexander Pope” Excerpt From: Moriarty, Liane. “The Husband’s Secret.
Alexander Pope
To err is human, to eat human is bear.
Jim Kamp
To err is human. To arr is pirate … What a difference a single misplaced letter can make.
Gyles Brandreth (Have You Eaten Grandma?)
To err is human. To avenge is Divine.
Sheila Masterson (The Poison Daughter)
Everyone has a secret. The depth and darkness of that inner truth can be the precursor that determines ones lifeline or, perhaps, eventually, personality. To err is human, so I'm told. But my mistakes and regrets were buried so deep, darkened my soul so black, that they were no longer secrets, but bars on a prison I trapped myself in,
Angela M. Hudson (Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets, #1))
We humans are prone to err, and to err systematically, outrageously, and with utter confidence. We are also prone to hold our mistaken notions dear, protecting and nourishing them like our own children. We defend them at great cost. We surround ourselves with safe people, people who will appreciate our cherished views. We avoid those who suggest that our exalted ideas, our little emperors, have no clothes.
Valerie Tarico (Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light)
all human beings err, but they err frequently and in predictable, patterned ways.
Atul Gawande (Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science)
To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it's too late is to become divinely fucked up.
Jonathan Tropper (The Book of Joe)
And was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world, laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering. At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul.
Hermann Hesse
We are going to make assumptions; that’s what humans do. Since most assumptions are flawed, err on the positive side. Always assume the best.
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
To err is human, to accept full responsibility is to just run with it
Josh Stern (And That’s Why I’m Single)
To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked
Vittorio Alfieri
To err is human—to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope (The Complete Works Of Alexander Pope [Annotated])
To err is human. To errah is Kennedy.
James DeAcutis (Peter Cooper and the Pirate King)
TO ERR IS HUMAN; TO REALLY SCREW UP REQUIRES THE ROOT PASSWORD.” —COMPUTER GEEK TRUISM
Stephen H. Segal (Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture)
To err is human @BronwynRojas. We look forward to receiving your application.
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1))
To err is human. To be forgiving and kind is compassionate artificial intelligence.
Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Intelligence)
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Jennifer McMahon (The Drowning Kind)
To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human. —Bob Goddard
Marti Olsen Laney (The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World)
Being newly married myself, I can’t profess to have the knowledge that you all do. But my mama always said there’s one important adage to live by in marriage: to err is human—and to forgive, divine.
Grace Callaway (The Lady Who Came in from the Cold (Heart of Enquiry, #3))
And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each ill author is as bad a friend. To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise! Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, Nor in the critic let the man be lost! Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope (An Essay On Criticism)
The human brain works by identifying patterns. It uses information from the past to understand what is happening in the present and to anticipate the future. This strategy works elegantly in most situations. But we inevitably see patterns where they don’t exist. In other words, we are slow to recognize exceptions. There is also the peer-pressure factor. All of us have been in situations that looked ominous, and they almost always turn out to be innocuous. If we behave otherwise, we risk social embarrassment by overreacting. So we err on the side of underreacting.
Amanda Ripley (The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why)
Making mistakes is a part of life, and it's okay--no one is perfect--to be human is to err. But for those who remain prideful through undoubted wrongfulness, should refrain from utterance. When knowingly mistaken, have the dignity to admit it.
Terry a O'Neal
For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women’s reality by seeking out women’s culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err—and they do err—they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men’s misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it’s politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change.
bell hooks (The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love)
An inexhaustible capacity to engage in sin is what makes human beings capable of living a virtuous life. To err is human; to seek penance is humankind’s unique act of salvation. Whenever a person fails, it is often their overwhelming sense of anguish that drives them forward to make a second attempt that is far more bighearted than they originally envisioned. The need for redemption drives us to try again despite our backside enduring the terrible weight of our greatest catastrophes. There is no person as magnanimous as a person whom finally encountered tremendous success after previously enduring a tear-filled trail of hardships and repeated setbacks. In an effort to redeem our lost dignity, in an effort to regain self-respect, we find our true selves. By working independently to better ourselves and struggling to fulfill our cherished values, we save ourselves while coincidentally uplifting all of humanity.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
To err is to be human, irrational or not. And while some mistakes are bigger than others, if we learn from them, we become better people.
T.J. Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea [Sneak Peek])
It's because, whenever possible, humans err on the side of hope.
Jodi Picoult (House Rules)
The problem with human race is not that it errs, but that it does so repetitively.
Raheel Farooq
To love is human. To err thus comes along with it.
Ana Chavez
One of the best roads to self-improvement is acceptance of personal mistakes and correcting them as soon as possible.
Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
Such is our human tendency, that whenever we admire somebody for their achievements in great things, it is hard to persuade us that they err in anything.
Richard Hooker (Radicalism: When Reform Becomes Revolution: The Preface to Hooker's Laws: A Modernization)
To err is animal, to correct is human.
Abhijit Naskar (Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat)
Err on the side of generosity. Not because you want something in return. Banking on reciprocity is a recipe for manipulation. Be generous because you’re human and you care.
Richie Norton
It is not human to be wise," said Blood. "It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy.
Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood)
Carl: Mordecai, quick. Best way to kill a hydra. One with human heads. Err, one cat head, too.
Matt Dinniman (The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6))
To err once is human; to err twice is idiotic. - Flora Gray
Nita Prose (The Mystery Guest (Molly the Maid, #2))
So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it.
Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener)
Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies— and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any “sinner,” or any “Saviour”— that “free will” and the “moral order of the world” are lies —: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it. . . . All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are — as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is — as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation. . . . We know, our conscience now knows — just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing — the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master. . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)
In so many ways, Jesus turned people’s expectations upside down. Who could have imagined the Creator of the universe invading the earth not in glory, but born to an unwed teenage mother who then placed Him in a feeding trough? Who could have imagined that when Israel’s Messiah appeared, He would be found among the prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners of His day, gaining a reputation as a glutton and a drunkard (Matt. 11:19)? Who could have imagined that God would defeat death by dying? Or conquer evil by allowing its triumph on the cross? Or free humanity by bearing upon Himself the cost of human sin and evil?
Mike Erre (Astonished: Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God)
is a mistake to market God as the answer to our insatiable desires when He was the one who made certain our desires were insatiable in the first place. God is relentless in His pursuit of humanity; He’ll use anything and everything to bring
Mike Erre (Astonished: Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God)
Mr. Parnassus didn’t seem to have that problem. He was smiling. “Exactly. To err is to be human, irrational or not. And while some mistakes are bigger than others, if we learn from them, we become better people. Even if we have spiders in our brains.
T.J. Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1))
To assume that the ruler cannot ever err or that he cannot be ignorant of something would be to portray him as blessed with divine inspiration and as elevated above the rest of humanity. Hence freedom of the pen . . . is the sole protector of the people's rights.
Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace and Other Essays)
Should she roll down the window? Was it safe? At this point, it would be rude not to, but she’d always read that a woman traveling alone should ignore their instincts to be polite and err on the side of not letting an enormous man pull her through a van window and onto the human trafficking market.
Molly Harper (How to Date Your Dragon (Mystic Bayou, #1))
THE AMERICAN brand of socialism known as the New Deal was made possible by the income tax. But with the advent of income taxation, socialism was unavoidable. There have always been, and perhaps always will be, people who are averse to letting other people alone. Recognizing the human inclination to err, they are impelled by their kindness of heart to overcome this imperfection; invariably they come up with a sure-proof plan that needs only political power to become effective. Political power is the essential ingredient of every one of these plans to improve the human. Since all the ills of mankind, they argue, follow from the exercise of free will, it follows that the only cure for these ills is to suppress free will and to compel the individual to behave in all things as per the perfect pattern devised by these improvers. Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner.
Frank Chodorov (The Income Tax: Root of All Evil)
What if those teams had created a better work environment? What if they had built a climate of openness where people felt able to speak up? What if that environment made it easier to be open and honest about error? To err is human. Mistakes happen—the only real question is whether we catch, admit, and correct them. Maybe the good teams, I suddenly thought, don’t make more mistakes, maybe they report more. They swim upstream against the widely held view of error as indicative of incompetence, which leads people everywhere to suppress acknowledging (or to deny responsibility for) mistakes. This discourages the systematic analysis of mistakes that allows us to learn from them. This insight eventually led me to the discovery of psychological safety, and why it matters in today’s world.
Amy C. Edmondson (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well)
The modern patient safety movement replaces “the blame and shame game” with an approach known as systems thinking. This paradigm acknowledges the human condition—namely, that humans err—and concludes that safety depends on creating systems that anticipate errors and either prevent or catch them before they cause harm. Such an approach has been the cornerstone of safety improvements in other high-risk industries but has been ignored in medicine until the past decade.
Robert M. Wachter (Understanding Patient Safety)
The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person. This is based on the philosopher John Rawls’s concepts of the “veil of ignorance” and the “original position” in which moral actors are ignorant of their position in society when determining rules and laws that affect everyone, because of the self-serving bias in human decision making.
Michael Shermer (The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom)
human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else. I
Donald A. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
Knowledge consists in the search for truth — the search for objectively true, explanatory theories. It is not the search for certainty. To err is human. All human knowledge is fallible and therefore uncertain. It follows that we must distinguish sharply between truth and certainty. That to err is human means not only that we must constantly struggle against error, but also that, even when we have taken the greatest care, we cannot be completely certain that we have not made a mistake… To combat the mistake, the error, means therefore to search for objective truth and to do everything possible to discover and eliminate falsehoods. This is the task of scientific activity. Hence we can say: our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty.... Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we can correct them.
Karl Popper (In Search of a Better World (Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years))
Nearly four centuries ago, the philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon wrote about the ways in which the mind errs, and he considered the failure to consider absences among the most serious: By far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises from [the fact that]…those things which strike the sense outweigh things which, although they may be more important, do not strike it directly. Hence, contemplation usually ceases with seeing, so much so that little or no attention is paid to things invisible.6
Daniel Todd Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness: An insightful neuroscience self-help psychology book on cognitive enhancement and human behavior)
—I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath!… Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say, generous self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millenniums of this madhouse of a world, call it “Christianity,” “Christian faith” or the “Christian church,” as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better… . What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called “truth”; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any “sinner,” or any “Saviour”—that “free will” and the “moral order of the world” are lies—: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it… . All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation… . We know, our conscience now knows—just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,—the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master… . Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?… A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!… Whom, then, does Christianity deny? what does it call “the world”? To be a soldier, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud … every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now anti-Christian: what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian!—
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Antichrist)
its essence, and not in the exoteric working out of detail as we think we see it from our present standpoint. The factor of time leads us astray for one thing; we err when we attempt to fix stated times or limits; all in evolution progresses through merging, with a constant process of overlapping and mingling. Only broad generalities and a recognition of fundamental points of analogy are possible to the average student. The moment he attempts to reduce to chart form and to tabulate in detail, he enters realms where he is bound to err, and staggers through a fog that will ultimately overwhelm him.
Alice A. Bailey (Initiation, Human & Solar: Unabridged)
O, weary angels, don’t look at me with those eyes. If that is your state then what of our cries? What can I tell you of goodness that you don’t already know? What can I tell you of faith, of hope and love that you yourselves bestow? O, angels, don’t pluck another feather, this isn’t the sky, it’s just the weather. Please, angels, try. We are one all together. Look up and listen, I’ll say it once and then put down my pen: We are sorry for our ignorance and even though we are worldly, it might happen again. We are sorry for your weariness and even though you aren’t worldly, we are no more than human.
Kamand Kojouri
Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list: It is our meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moreal flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.
Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)
If you fret that the world grows short of genuine wonders, consider this: the most complex lump of matter in the universe. It works in ways we can only guess at. THrough generations of intense study, scientists have at last come to understand some of its local mechanism, but the connection between local and general remains for them, as for the rest of us, a matter of arm-waving speculation--we know less about what's going on inside of it than we do about the functional structure of the most distant galaxies. It weighs a little over three pounds and is the consistency of toothpaste; you're carrying it between your ears.
Michael Kaplan (Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human)
If you’re going to make an error in life, err on the side of overestimating your capabilities (obviously, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize your life). By the way, this is something that’s hard to do, since the human capacity is so much greater than most of us would ever dream. In fact, many studies have focused on the differences between people who are depressed and people who are extremely optimistic. After attempting to learn a new skill, the pessimists are always more accurate about how they did, while the optimists see their behavior as being more effective than it actually was. Yet this unrealistic evaluation of their own performance is the secret of their future success. Invariably the optimists eventually end up mastering the skill while the pessimists fail. Why? Optimists are those who, despite having no references for success, or even references of failure, manage to ignore those references, leaving unassembled such cognitive tabletops as “I failed” or “I can’t succeed.” Instead, optimists produce faith references, summoning forth their imagination to picture themselves doing something different next time and succeeding. It is this special ability, this unique focus, which allows them to persist until eventually they gain the distinctions that put them over the top. The reason success eludes most people is that they have insufficient references of succeeding in the past. But an optimist operates with beliefs such as, “The past doesn’t equal the future.” All great leaders, all people who have achieved success in any area of life, know the power of continuously pursuing their vision, even if all the details of how to achieve it aren’t yet available. If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
Anthony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!)
our paint-by-numbers, Kinkade Christianity. Instead of escape or pretense, Jesus calls us to be alive and thirsty, allowing disappointment to drive us back to Him. He bids us to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking, all the while feeling the grief and sorrow of human life acutely. To sell Jesus on the basis of meeting felt needs is fine so long as we define how exactly He “meets” those needs. If meeting those needs means the removal of the sin, sorrow, and disappointment of human life, then we’ll be perpetually disappointed. If meeting those needs means that Jesus uses our unfulfilled desires to keep us dependent and reliant upon Him, then we’re getting close to the secret of the full life that Christ offers.
Mike Erre (Astonished: Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God)
Here, where an immense country lies about me, over which the winds pass coming from the seas, here I feel that no human being anywhere can answer for you those questions and feelings that deep within them have a life of their own; for even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things. But I believe nevertheless that you will not have to remain without a solution if you will hold to objects that are similar to those from which my eyes now draw refreshment. If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it—but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters To A Young Poet)
Hearing may make shorter intuitive leaps than sight, but it too is subject to illusions. The most pleasant of these are 'mondegreens,' named by the author Sylvia Wright from her youthful mishearing of the Scottish ballad that actually says, 'They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / and they layd him on the green'--not, alas, 'the Lady Mondegreen.' Children, with their relaxed expectations for logic, are a rich source of these (pledging allegiance to 'one Asian in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all'), but everyone has the talent to infer the ridiculous from the inaudible--and, what's more, to believe in it. Here, at least, we do behave like computers, in that our voice-recognition software has little regard for probability but boldly assumes we live in a world of surrealist poets. We are certain that Mick Jagger will never leave our pizza burning and that the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hot cement.
Michael Kaplan (Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human)
Where is Albert?" "He'll be here momentarily. I asked our housekeeper to fetch him." Christopher blinked. "She's not afraid of him?" "Of Albert? Heavens, no, everyone adores him." The concept of someone, anyone, adoring his belligerent pet was difficult to grasp. Having expected to receive an inventory of all the damage Albert had caused, Christopher gave her a blank look. And then the housekeeper returned with an obedient and well-groomed dog trotting by her side. "Albert?" Christopher said. The dog looked at him, ears twitching. His whiskered face changed, eyes brightening with excitement. Without hesitating, Albert launched forward with a happy yelp. Christopher knelt on the floor, gathering up an armful of joyfully wriggling canine. Albert strained to lick him, and whimpered and dove against him repeatedly. Christopher was overwhelmed by feelings of kinship and relief. Grabbing the warm, compact body close, Christopher murmured his name and petted him roughly, and Albert whined and trembled. "I missed you, Albert. Good boy. There's my boy." Unable to help himself, Christopher pressed his face against the rough fur. He was undone by guilt, humbled by the fact that even though he had abandoned Albert for the summer, the dog showed nothing but eager welcome. "I was away too long," Christopher murmured, looking into the soulful brown eyes. "I won't leave you again." He dragged his gaze up to Beatrix's. "It was a mistake to leave him," he said gruffly. She was smiling at him. "Albert won't hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine." To his disbelief, Christopher felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his lips. He continued to pet the dog, who was fit and sleek. "You've taken good care of him." "He's much better behaved than before," she said. "You can take him anywhere now." Rising to his feet, Christopher looked down at her. "Why did you do it?" he asked softly. "He's very much worth saving. Anyone could see that." The awareness between them became unbearably aware. Christopher's heart worked in hard, uneven beats. How pretty she was in the white dress. She radiated a healthy female physicality that was very different from the fashionable frailty of London women. He wondered what it would be like to bed her, if she would be as direct in her passions as she was in everything else.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
AT: oKAYYYY, mY BROMO SAPIEN, AT: r U READY, AT: tO GET STRAIGHT IN, FLAT DOWN, BROAD SIDE, SCHOOL FED UP THE BONE BULGE, AT: bY A DOPE SMACKED, TRINKED OUT, SMOTHER FUDGING, AT: tROLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, TG: dont care AT: oK, lET ME, AT: oRGANIZE MY NOTES HERE, AT: oKAYYY, AT: (tURN ON SOME STRICT BEATS MAYBE, iT WILL HELP TO LISTEN TO THEM WHILE i DESTROY YOU,) AT: wHEN THE POLICE MAN BUSTS ME, aND POPS THE TRUNK, AT: hE'S ALL SUPRISED TO FIND I'M TOTING SICK BILLY, AT: wHOSE, AT: gOAT IS THAT, hE ASKS, wHILE HE STOPS TO THUNK AT: aBOUT IT, aND i'S JUST SAY IT'S DAVE'S, yOU SILLY AT: gOOSE, AT: bUT THE MAN SAYS, gOOSE! wHERE, lET ME SEE YOUR HANDS, AT: aND i SAY SHIT SORRY, i DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS HONKTRABAND, AT: wOW, oK, AT: i AM GETTING OFF THE POINT, wHICH WAS, AT: aBOUT THIS HOT MESS DAVE, tHAT YOU GOT LANDED IN, AT: lIKE THE COP i MENTIONED, bUT INSTEAD OF YOUR BADGE, AT: aND YOUR GUN, IT'S YOUR ASS THAT YOU HANDED IN, AT: (aND THEN GOT HANDED BACK TO YOU,) AT: cAUSE THAT'S HOW HUMANS GET SERVED, AT: aND GUYS LIKE YOU DESERVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT iT'S, AT: a CIRCLE AND HORNS IN YOUR BUTT THAT GOT BRANDED IN, AT: (uMM, bEFORE i GAVE YOUR ASS BACK TO YOU, i DID THAT, iS WHAT i MEAN,) AT: bUT i MEAN, gETTING BACK TO THE POINT, oR MAYBE TWO ACTUALLY, AT: tHE FIRST IS YOU SUCK, aND THE SECOND IS HOW i SMACKEDYOUFULLY, AT: (oH YEAH, tHAT RHYME WAS SO ILLLLLLLLL,) AT: bUT NO, jUST JOKING, lET'S SEE, hOW CAN i PUT THIS TACTFULLULLY, AT: i MEAN THE POINTS ON THE HORNS ON MY HEAD, AT: cOMING AT YOU THROUGH TRAFFIC, AT: aIMED AT THE TARGET ON YOUR SHIRT THAT IS RED, AT: wE'RE ABOUT TO GET MAD HORNOGRAPHIC, AT: (i MEAN SORT OF LIKE A GRAPHIC CRIME SCENE, nOT LIKE,) AT: (aNYTHING SEXUAL,) AT: (eRR, wHOAAAAA,) AT: (nEVERMIND,) AT: oK, gETTING BACK TO THE ACTUAL, tACTICAL, vERNACULAR SMACKCICLE, AT: i'M FORCING YOU TO BE LICKING, (aND lIKING,) AT: gRAB MY HORNS AND START KICKING, lIKE YOU'RE RIDING A VIKING, AT: cAUSE i'M YOUR BULLY, aND YOU'RE NOT IN CHARGE, AT: yOU THINK YOU'RE IN CHARGE BUT YOU'RE NOT IN CHARGE, AT: i'M IN CHARGE, cAUSE i'M CHARGING IN, AT: yOUR CHINASHOP, AT: bREAKING, uH, yOUR PLATES AND STUFF, WHICH i DON'T REALLY KNOW, AT: wHAT THE PLATES ARE SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT, bUT, AT: (fUCK,) AT: iT'S JUST THAT YOU THINK YOU ARE THE COCK OF THE WALK'S HOT SHIT AT: bUT WHEN IN FACT YOU ARE NOT, mORE LIKE YOU ARE, AT: sOMETHING THAT RHYMES WITH THE COCK OF THE WALK'S HOT SHIT, AT: bUT IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THE COCK'S SHIT, AT: sO, gIVEN THAT, lET ME BE THE FIRST, AT: tO SAY YOU ACT LIKE YOU'RE GOLD FROM PROSPIT, AT: wHEN YOU'RE REALLY COLD SHIT FLUSHED FROM DERSE,
Andrew Hussie (Homestuck)
Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies— and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any “sinner,” or any “Saviour”— that “free will” and the “moral order of the world” are lies —: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it. . . . All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are — as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is — as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation. . . . We know, our conscience now knows — just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing — the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master. . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)
And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like com-passes, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last - a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned. saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing, and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them. And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England.
John Ruskin (On Art and Life (Penguin Great Ideas))
Women are inherently crooked? Certainly some Muslim clerics think so—or at least, they do not believe in legal equality for women. Bangladeshi Islamic cleric Mufti Fazlul Haq Amini read the same Koran that Tony Blair found so progressive and yet complained about attempts in his native country to establish equal property rights for women. The problem? That would be “directly against Islam and the holy Koran.”7 And where do Muslims get such ideas? They stem from the overall inferior status of women promulgated in the Koran, which specifically refutes the notion that women have as much basic human dignity as men. To the contrary, Allah says men are superior. When giving regulations for divorce, Allah stipulates that women “have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness.” Similar, but not identical, for “men are a degree above them” (2:228). Far from mandating equality, the Koran portrays women as essentially possessions of men. The Koran likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223). And in a tradition Muhammad details the qualities of a good wife, including that “she obeys when instructed” and “the husband is pleased to look at her.”8 The Koran decrees women’s subordination to men in numerous other verses:            •    It declares that a woman’s legal testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).            •    It allows men to marry up to four wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).            •    It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).            •    It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).
Robert Spencer (The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran)
If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary); he acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle. … Obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself; (p. 6) In order to disobey, one must have the courage to be alone, to err and to sin. ... …; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth. (p. 8) At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization. (p. 10) It is the function of the prophet to show reality, to show alternatives and to protest; it is his function to call loudly, to awake man from his customary half-slumber. It is the historical situation which makes prophets, not the wish of some men to be prophets. (p. 12) Disobedience, then, in the sense in which we use it here, is an act of the affirmation of reason and will. It is not primarily an attitude directed against something, but for something: for man’s capacity to see, to say what he sees, and to refuse to say what he does not see (p. 17) That which was the greatest criticism of socialism fifty years ago—that it would lead to uniformity, bureaucratization, centralization, and a soulless materialism—is a reality of today’s capitalism. (p. 31) Man, instead of being the master of the machines he has built, has become their servant. But man is not made to be a thing, and with all the satisfactions of consumption, the life forces in man cannot be held in abeyance continuously. We have only one choice, and that is mastering the machine again, making production into a means and not an end, using it for the unfolding of man—or else the suppressed life energies will manifest themselves in chaotic and destructive forms. Man will want to destroy life rather than die of boredom. (p. 32) The supreme loyalty of man must be to the human race and to the moral principles of humanism. (p. 38) The individual must be protected from fear and the need to submit to anyone’s coercion. (p. 42) Not only in the sphere of political decisions, but with regard to all decisions and arrangements, the grip of the bureaucracy must be broken in order to restore freedom. (p. 42) According to its basic principles, the aim of socialism is the abolition of national sovereignty, the abolition of any kind of armed forces, and the establishment of a commonwealth of nations. (p. 43) It is exactly the weakness of contemporary society that it offers no ideals, that it demands no faith, that it has no vision—except that of more of the same. (p. 49) Socialism must be radical. To be radical is to go to the roots; and the root is Man. (p. 49)
Erich Fromm (On Disobedience and Other Essays)
Classical liberalism has been reproached with being too obstinate and not ready enough to compromise. It was because of its inflexibility that it was defeated in its struggle with the nascent anticapitalist parties of all kinds. If it had realized, as these other parties did, the importance of compromise and concession to popular slogans in winning the favor of the masses, it would have been able to preserve at least some of its influence. But it has never bothered to build for itself a party organization and a party machine as the anticapitalist parties have done. It has never attached any importance to political tactics in electoral campaigns and parliamentary proceedings. It has never gone in for scheming opportunism or political bargaining. This unyielding doctrinairism necessarily brought about the decline of liberalism. The factual assertions contained in these statements are entirely in accordance with the truth, but to believe that they constitute a reproach against liberalism is to reveal a complete misunderstanding of its essential spirit. The ultimate and most profound of the fundamental insights of liberal thought is that it is ideas that constitute the foundation on which the whole edifice of human social cooperation is Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition constructed and sustained and that a lasting social structure cannot be built on the basis of false and mistaken ideas. Nothing can serve as a substitute for an ideology that enhances human life by fostering social cooperation—least of all lies, whether they be called "tactics," "diplomacy," or "compromise." If men will not, from a recognition of social necessity, voluntarily do what must be done if society is to be maintained and general well-being advanced, no one can lead them to the right path by any cunning stratagem or artifice. If they err and go astray, then one must endeavor to enlighten them by instruction. But if they cannot be enlightened, if they persist in error, then nothing can be done to prevent catastrophe. All the tricks and lies of demagogic politicians may well be suited to promote the cause of those who, whether in good faith or bad, work for the destruction of society. But the cause of social progress, the cause of the further development and intensification of social bonds, cannot be advanced by lies and demagogy. No power on earth, no crafty stratagem or clever deception could succeed in duping mankind into accepting a social doctrine that it not only does not acknowledge, but openly spurns. The only way open to anyone who wishes to lead the world back to liberalism is to convince his fellow citizens of the necessity of adopting the liberal program. This work of enlightenment is the sole task that the liberal can and must perform in order to avert as much as lies within his power the destruction toward which society is rapidly heading today. There is no place here for concessions to any of the favorite or customary prejudices and errors. In regard to questions that will decide whether or not society is to continue to exist at all, whether millions of people are to prosper or perish, there is no room for compromise either from weakness or from misplaced deference for the sensibilities of others. If liberal principles once again are allowed to guide the policies of great nations, if a revolution in public opinion could once more give capitalism free rein, the world will be able gradually to raise itself from the condition into which the policies of the combined anticapitalist factions have plunged it. There is no other way out of the political and social chaos of the present age.
Ludwig von Mises (Liberalism: The Classical Tradition)
There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchad of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. He must not err and wish to enter the orchad through a gate other than his own. That would present a danger not only for the one entering but also for those who are already inside.
Elie Wiesel (Night)
He knew, by some spiritual sense—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
SAs must find a balance between giving users full access and restricting them. This balance affects the rate at which the OS will decay. A wise person once said, “To err is human; to really screw up requires the root password.
Thomas A. Limoncelli (Practice of System and Network Administration, The: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT, Volume 1)
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." -Henry Beston
Marc Bekoff (The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age)
Luther accused Henry and the papists of begging the question, of claiming that the traditions of the church should be observed merely because they were traditions, without considering whether they came from God or from human invention. "I cry gospel, gospel, Christ, Christ; they respond fathers fathers, custom, custom, laws, laws, where as I say truly that the fathers, custom, and law have often erred ... Christ cannot err."-'" Perhaps Luther's greatest insult was to say that no one imagined that Henry had written his book by himself.'' On Luther rolled in a torrent of abuse. "Draw near to my rod, you vainglorious Thomist," he cried. "I will teach you how to argue about dogma."22 At the end he crowed that he had been victorious over the king by opposing God's word to human custom." "Here I stand," he wrote, here I sit, here I remain, here I glory, here I triumph, here I contemn Papists, Thomists, Henricians, sophists, and all the gates of hell all the more in that they are led astray by the sayings of holy men or customs. God's word is over all. The divine majesty works with me, and I do not care if a thousand Augustines, a thousand Cyprians, a thousand churches of Henry stand against me. God cannot err or fail; Augustine and Cyprian like all the elects can err, and they did err.-" The issue, as any Catholic knew, was not whether the fathers could err as individuals; it was whether they had reached consensus on a core of doctrines necessary to be believed. Luther's furious language indicates a willingness to attack that ancient consensus in the name of the gospel and to elevate his own understanding above the agreements of centuries.
Richard Marius (Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death)
To err is human. To kill is evil.
Tite Kubo
To err is machine, to correct is mind.
Abhijit Naskar (Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion)
To err is human; we all make mistakes. That, however, can’t be the justification to repeat them. There are only two ways to show that we have realized our mistake: first, by not repeating it, and second, by offering a sincere apology. Let’s focus on the second point, that is, how to apologize. Apologizing correctly is neither an art nor a craft. It’s simply being natural and truthful. When we genuinely regret our action, the right words come out automatically and seeking forgiveness becomes easier.
Om Swami (The Big Questions of Life)
1. The mere fact that you are alive this day means God has a purpose for you for the day. Ask Him what that purpose is and He will reveal it to you. 2. Not even one person was put on earth by God for the mere reason of increasing the human population and have little precious else to do in life. 3. Purpose is what something is used for. A chair is for sitting on and a bed to be slept on. Similarly, you were created for some particular use. 4. The greatest satisfaction in life comes from following the purpose you were created for. 5. Want to lead an empty and unfulfilled life? Do what you were not created for. 6.Being successful at something does not always guarantee a happy, fulfilled life but following what you were brought to life for. Find out what that is. 7. Being religious does not mean you pray, fold your arms and wait for things to happen.Divine power and human effort always work hand in glove to reap the best results. Do what is humanly possible and let divine power play its part. God can't do for you what you can do for yourself. Neither can you do what God can do for you. 8. Religion helps open doors that seem impossible to open. Religion does not consist in ceremonies and theories only. If it did people would understand it by investigation as they understand science and other things in the world 9. At times God only gives us what we need after praying long and hard. While others appear never to pray for anything and yet get what they need others have to pray long and hard. Life indeed works in mysterious ways. Why that is so is God's prerogative. 10. No field has more talented people than are required. God is too wise to err. He would not have given you a purpose and talent that you can't use because it is oversubscribed. No matter how many people are in a field the truly gifted will float.
Rodrick Chinodakufa
As often as possible, sometimes at all costs, and often times in spite of good reason, we are both compelled by our psyche and pressured by our social circumstances to always be right. And when we aren’t, it hurts. So much so that it can often create horrible sensations in the brain akin to real physical pain. And so, we of course try to avoid it, or at least admitting it, at all costs. And yet, it is impossible to avoid. And furthermore, it is possibly the case that fundamentally, we are never actually right at all. In the words of St. Augustine, “I err, therefore I am.” As a consciousness, in the form that we are born into, we are all put up against the imperative of our mind to desire absolute truth, while simultaneously, the seeming imperative of the natural world that prohibits us from obtaining it. We will all cling to reason and answers and worldviews just to have them smashed to pieces time and time again, whether we know it or admit it to ourselves or not. We will all likely not only be wrong often but right rarely, even in the meta, subjective sense. And so, perhaps we can and must learn how to be ok with this if we wish to be ok with consciousness. Perhaps we must learn how to fundamentally be ok with being wrong, or we will loath ourselves until the end. Perhaps we must love and accept the hypocrisy that runs through the very veins of the human condition, or we will hate all of humankind. Perhaps we must learn how to dial back our expectations and the degree in which we dread over the inevitable failure of everything we believe, and the beliefs of others just the same. This is not to make light of the immense challenge of such an arduous endeavor. It is an endless upward climb of surpassing one’s default mode and understanding of the world. But perhaps if we can, at least some of the time, succeed in doing so, we can feel a little less embarrassed, disgusted, miserable, ashamed, bitter, angry, and all the rest, and perhaps we can be a little less wrong a little more often. This apparent impossibility of successfully thinking paired with the inability to ever not be thinking, seems to beg the question: is consciousness a gift or a curse? Or perhaps some combination of both? Perhaps the answer depends on whether or not all of this, the ability to be curious about and discuss things like the possible impossibility of ever truly being right is worth possibly never being right about anything. And perhaps such a truth can only be answered by you.
Robert Pantano
Equally valuable is embracing preventive tactics of all kinds—from training to error-proofing. This is not the sexy part of failing well—not the part that gets social media likes or hailed as the latest management fad. Given its enormous value (just ask Alcoa stockholders or commercial airline passengers!), this is a shame. A vital part of failing well is preventing basic failures. If you aspire to zero harm and failure-free work at the point of delivery, it’s essential to make friends with human error. Yes, to err is human. And to forgive (ourselves, especially) is indeed divine. But adopting simple practices to prevent basic failures in our lives and organizations is both possible and worthwhile. You might even say it’s empowering.
Amy C. Edmondson (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well)
To err is human... but to err less each day is to become closer to the divine.
Ryan Holiday (Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control)
To err is human. So relax and join the human race with the rest of us. It’s okay. In fact, it is more than okay. It is preferable and natural.
Lynn Rossy (Savor Every Bite: Mindful Ways to Eat, Love Your Body, and Live with Joy)
To err is human; but machines also make mistakes. These same systems have been responsible for several near-catastrophic false alarms. Once, in the 1950s, early-warning radars interpreted a flock of swans as a fleet of Russian MiG fighter jets en route to the U.S. by way of the North Pole. In October 1960, computers at the ground radar site in Thule, Greenland, misread the moon rising up over Norway as being the radar returns from 1,000 attacking ICBMs. In 1979, a simulation test tape mistakenly inserted into a NORAD computer deceived analysts into thinking the U.S. was under attack by Russian nuclear-armed ICBMs and nuclear ballistic submarines.
Annie Jacobsen (Nuclear War: A Scenario)
Do you think God will ever forgive me for my sins?” I would say: “Forgiveness already exists in the nature of God; it is already there. God has already forgiven you, for God is forgiveness itself. ‘To err is human, and to forgive divine.’ But can you truly forgive yourself? That’s the real question.
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
To err is human, Johannes. Mistakes do not matter as long as they are honest, as long as you never, ever hesitate or give up.
Jonathan L. Howard (The Fear Institute (Johannes Cabal, #3))
In a 1999 report called “To Err Is Human,” the Institute of Medicine estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year because of preventable hospital errors—more than deaths from motor-vehicle crashes or breast cancer—and that one of the leading errors is wound infection.
Steven D. Levitt (SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance)
The Finnish Orthodox writer Tito Colliander told a story about a monk who was once asked, “What do you do there in the monastery?” The monk replied, “We fall and get up, fall and get up, fall and get up again.”[22] This is a lovely picture of the spiritual journey: falling and getting back up, again and again over the course of a life. We will fail at pretty much everything written in this book. Often. Not just daily but, at least in the beginning, hourly. That doesn’t make you a bad apprentice; it just makes you human. The metaphor of walking with God is used all through Scripture; it comes as no surprise, so does its companion metaphor—stumbling. We will trip up, ignorantly lose our way, or even blatantly err and wander off the path at times. It’s not a question of if, but when. When we stumble, what then? We begin again.
John Mark Comer (Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.)
To err is human—to be utterly reliable time and time again takes a computer. “Fifty meters.
Peter Cawdron (Cold Eyes)
People are especially averse to algorithmic forecasters after seeing them err, even if they do better than human forecasters.27
Cass R. Sunstein (Decisions about Decisions: Practical Reason in Ordinary Life)
The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account.
Donald A. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
As it happened, neither of them was wearing any clothes. As a result, one of the charges against him was for “being out of uniform.” The officer’s lawyer argued that the lieutenant was not out of uniform, as the regulations read: “Naval officers must be at all times appropriately attired for the activity in which they are engaged.” The lieutenant was acquitted.
Andy A. Bufalo (To Err is Human, To Forgive Divine: However Neither is Marine Corps Policy)
Q: What do you get when you breed a groundhog and a West Point Cadet?   A: Six more weeks of bad football!
Andy A. Bufalo (To Err is Human, To Forgive Divine: However Neither is Marine Corps Policy)
Seeking a balance between doing and being is complex. But as my friend Lisa Whelchel reminds me, we’re human beings, not human doings. Perhaps it’s best, then, to err on the side of less doing and more being, to spend time in thankful quiet each day before racing and chasing in this hurried and harried culture of ours.
Karen Ehman (Let. It. Go.: How to Stop Running the Show and Start Walking in Faith)
To err is human--to blame it on someone else is even more human
Farnsworth Blasingame
To err is human...Purrfection is feline.
Patricia Mason (Confucius Cat Says...)
Christmas Day 2012 Continuation of my Message to Andy (part 2)   After the evening’s ‘Kumbayah’ singalong at the OBSS camp, we had some alone time before returning to our respective tents for a good night’s sleep, fresh and ready for the following day’s Outward Bound events.               Just as I was ready to garner some quality time to myself, Jules asked, “How are you feeling, Young?”               “I’m good sir, and you?” I answered.               “Care for a stroll with me?” “Sure. I was about to find a quiet spot to contemplate,” I said.               “What are you contemplating?”               “Oh. This, that and the other,” I remarked nonchalantly.               “Is something bothering you?” he pressed.               I looked at him for a brief second. “Maybe there’s something that’s bothering you?” I countered.               He went silent, thinking of an appropriate parry. “Err, err… there is nothing bothering me. I’m concerned about your recovery… from the swimming incident.”               “I’m fine. Thank you for your concern.”               Silence followed, before the instructor muttered, “Shall we walk? I’d like to get to know you better.”               We headed away from the camp, but remained silent. When out of earshot, Jules began, “You are different from the other boys at the camp.”               “How so?”               “You are mature beyond you age,” he opined. “Most of the boys who come to OBSS lack social and human relationship skills. But you… you seem to know a lot more than meets the eye.”               The Caucasian was inveigling me to confide in him.               “I learned the art of social conversation and human relationships at my English boarding school.”               “It must be an excellent school,” he declared.               “It sure is. I learned a lot of invaluable skills, not taught in regular classes,” I commented sportively.               Jules pressed, “What exactly did they teach you?”               “Oh, I’d rather show than tell,” I teased. “Would you like me to demonstrate?
Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
I was away too long,” Christopher murmured, looking into the soulful brown eyes. “I won’t leave you again.” He dragged his gaze up to Beatrix’s. “It was a mistake to leave him,” he said gruffly. She was smiling at him. “Albert won’t hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine.” To his disbelief, Christopher felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his lips. He continued to pet the dog, who was fit and sleek. “You’ve taken good care of him.” “He’s much better behaved than before,” she said. “You can take him anywhere now.” Rising to his feet, Christopher looked down at her. “Why did you do it?” he asked softly. “He’s very much worth saving. Anyone could see that.” The awareness between them became unbearably acute. Christopher’s heart worked in hard, uneven beats. How pretty she was in the white dress. She radiated a healthy female physicality that was very different from the fashionable frailty of London women. He wondered what it would be like to bed her, if she would be as direct in her passions as she was in everything else.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
I am only a human.                                       I plot. I scheme. I believe my own lies.       I err. I sin. I look the other way even if something inside me dies.                             I get away with almost everything.               Why?                                                                 Because I am only a human.
Shruti Upadhaya (White Noise (BEE Books E-Book))
To err is human, to forgive is divine … but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I’m going to err toward beating you with this stick.
Mark Lawrence (Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1))
Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.
Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)
To err is human,” Amelia said, “to forgive, absolutely galling.
Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
Now, a third and final trait, one which, in my eyes, best describes socialists of all schools and shades, is a profound opposition to personal liberty and scorn for individual reason, a complete contempt for the individual. They unceasingly attempt to mutilate, to curtail, to obstruct personal freedom in any and all ways. They hold that the State must not only act as the director of society, but must further be master of each man, and not only master, but keeper and trainer. [“Excellent.”] For fear of allowing him to err, the State must place itself forever by his side, above him, around him, better to guide him, to maintain him, in a word, to confine him. They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, [Further signs of assent.] to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The kind life, the receivable life, errs on the side of what we're for rather than what we're against. . . . We need a firm center and soft edges. We need to tone down the saber rattling, the fit shaking, the scowled conversations, the voice raising. The way of kindness is not just having the right theology; it's being the right kind of people. It's understanding that our lives as Jesus' followers mean we have a common humanity with everyone, and therefore there's no need for exceptionalism. We ow all human beings the honor due them as beings made in the image of God.
Barry H. Corey
One: Never, ever hurry. If you do something fast once, people will expect you to do it that fast every other time. Two: Never be the first person to do anything. To err is human, but to err in a way no one has erred before makes people question your judgment. Three: There is no mistake that cannot be papered over by enough of the right kind of documentation. Once the dust settles, it’s not what you do, but what you say about what you did, that matters.” The
H. Paul Honsinger (For Honor We Stand (Man of War, #2))
To err is human, to love is divine. But
Celia Kyle (Maya: Wisdom from the Queen (Ridgeville, #11))
To err is human, to forgive, divine.” ~ Alexander Pope
Eric Watterson (I forgive you: why you should always (the path of forgiveness))
To err is human. To really screw up requires the root password."—UNKNOWN
Kevin Behr (The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps)
Thus, though there is a psychological tendency of accepting the judge’s verdict and reasoning as expert reasoning and tinge of finality adorned to his discretely reasoned judgement, what cannot be forgotten is even judges are human with a fallibility in veins and to err is but human, hence placing  complete dependence on judicial reasoning also would be a folly, but it can be accepted as  a workable hypothesis, in my opinion.Further only concrete strands of tested reasoning and principles drawn from those concrete raison d’être , can be considered as one of the ingredient in concrete law making.
Henrietta Newton Martin (General Laws and Interpretation-Sultanate of Oman-Part I Perspicuous Edition -2014)
To err is human. To admit it, a blunder.
Various (101 Best Jokes)
We should not err by regarding personal satisfaction, “happiness,” as the criterion for mental health. Mental health must be judged not only by the relative harmony that prevails within the human ego, but by the requirements of a civilized people for the attainment of the highest social values. If a child is “free of neurotic symptoms” but values his freedom from fear so highly that he will never in his lifetime risk himself for an idea or a principle, then this mental health does not serve human welfare. If he is “secure” but never aspires to anything but personal security, then this security cannot be valued in itself. If he is “well adjusted to the group” but secures his adjustment through uncritical acceptance of and compliance with the ideas of others, then this adjustment does not serve a democratic society. If he “adjusts well in school” but furnishes his mind with commonplace ideas and facts and nourishes this mind with the cheap fantasies of comic books, then what civilization can value the “adjustment” of this child? The highest order of mental health must include the freedom of a man to employ his intelligence for the solution of human problems, his own and those of his society. This freedom of the intellect requires that the higher mental processes of reason and judgment should be removed as far as possible from magic, self-gratification, and egocentric motives. The education of a child toward mental health must include training of the intellect. A child’s emotional well-being is as much dependent upon the fullest use of his intellectual capacity as upon the satisfaction of basic body needs. The highest order of mental health must include a solid and integrated value system, an organization within the personality that is both conscience and ideal self, with roots so deeply imbedded in the structure of personality that it cannot be violated or corrupted. We cannot speak of mental health in a personality where such an ethical system does not exist. If we employ such loose criteria as “personal satisfaction” or “adjustment to the group” for evaluating mental health, a delinquent may conceivably achieve the highest degree of personal satisfaction in the pursuit of his own objectives, and his adjustment to the group—the delinquent group—is as nicely worked out as you could imagine. Theoretically,
Selma H. Fraiberg (The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood)
To err is human; to forgive canine.” The
Joe Stephens (Kisses and Lies: A Shalan Adventure (The Shalan Adventures Book 2))
To err is human: to forgive, divine.
Various (Familiar Quotations)
More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.
Donald A. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
To err is human, but to err on the side of compassion is humane.
Karl Schmidtt
At times, intuition can lead to mistakes, although maybe less often than numbers-based decision-making. We’ve made our share of intuitive mistakes at Semco. Life is full of mistakes. But you won’t catch me subscribing to the new age management mantra—to err is human, but erring twice is not so hot. I don’t buy the notion that we must carefully study our mistakes in order not to repeat them.
Ricardo Semler (The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works)
If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.
William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature)
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it. — Josh Jenkins
Anonymous (Keep It Simple: Daily Meditations for Twelve Step Beginnings and Renewal (Hazelden Meditations))
Whether fate or fortuitous, The voyage is incessant. Life is gratuitous, It's regrets recrudescent. We so blindly see adversely, Linear to some 'decree'. Sentenced by each other, To live this critically. To err is Human, Ironic that we divest. For any man who puts that past him, No misfortunes he has left.
Alen Joans
Twenty times better to err on the person than suspicious of everyone.
Arkady Strugatsky
To err is human; to forgive, divine."- Alexander Pope In
Tyler Green (Self-Discipline:The Ultimate Guide To Greatness, Get Results Most People Can Only Dream Of (Self Confidence, Self Control, Mental Toughness, Willpower))
To err is human,” Amelia said, “to forgive, absolutely galling. But
Lisa Kleypas (The Hathaways Complete Series (The Hathaways #1-5))
But if Marx errs, his error does not lie, as his critics often allege, in underestimating “innate human selfishness.” Instead, his error—and, again, it is the common error today—lies in the other direction, in underestimating the capacity of subjects to act against their self-interest.
Todd McGowan (The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment (Psychoanalysis and Culture))
What the precise balance should be depends on the exact parameters of the situation, but thinking about sorting as valuable only to support future search tells us something surprising: Err on the side of messiness. Sorting something that you will never search is a complete waste; searching something you never sorted is merely inefficient. The question, of course, becomes how to estimate ahead of time what your future usage will be.
Brian Christian (Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
Animals wake up, find food, eat, sleep and wake up again. Are humans also supposed to have the same purpose only? Conscience may not err in helping to differentiate between right and wrong, but the right ethical choice may not be chosen if it conflicts with self- interest. If I believe that this life is the only life, then why shall I use my limited time, income, abilities and resources to help others? If I am just part of an evolutionary process, why should good and evil matter? Why should conscience and ethics in any way be different from dust and air?
Salman Ahmed Shaikh (Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World)
Mistakes are plankton in the Sea of Consequence.
Stewart Stafford
We cannot always know where the line exactly falls between justified and unjustified uses of state force. But both in crafting laws and enforcing them: when in doubt, err toward liberty. Better that the government let some offenses go unmanaged than seek to totally manage them all and, in so doing, intrude too far, upon the innocent. If for no other reason: it is far easier to right a crooked life than a crooked law. The former is free to change as soon as error is brought to light, while the latter—to borrow a metaphor from President Obama—constitutes a veritable aircraft carrier slow to steer back on course. We carve our opinions into the stone of the state at our peril, for human error is inevitable, and these are hard opinions to retract.
Shmuel Pernicone (Why We Resist: Letter From a Young Patriot in the Age of Trump)
to err is human, to forgive, divine.” “You like Shakespeare, do you?
John Jakes (The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell (North and South, #1-3))
It is only human to make mistakes, however, it is awfully inhuman to err upon others.
Trent Lindsey (Those Wyrd and Wonderful)
Forgiveness is about realizing that a human can err and still do better, even after doing the worst.
Gift Gugu Mona (The True Value of Forgiveness: Quotes and Sayings)
To Err is Human, To Admit is Divine " Dated 2005 or so. That's my view.
Sriman Narayanan
To Err is Human, To Admit is Divine. (Dated 2005 or so. There are a very few that have the courage to face or admit, isn't it ?)
Sriman Narayanan
The report was titled To Err Is Human [4]. It “made the case” for patient safety, explaining the science of error-making and the theoretical and practical evidence for human-factors -based systems changes.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
To Err Is Human explained the concept of using a systems approach based on human factors principles and proclaimed that application of this methodology could have a profound effect. It boldly called for a 50% reduction in medical harm in 5 years.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
Most importantly, however, the paper influenced Ken Shine , president of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and its Quality of Care Committee, to make safety a focus of its work in quality of care. (See Chap. 9.) The Committee’s later report To Err is Human [14] was in many ways a detailed explication of the information in Error in Medicine, amplified with patient examples and specific recommendations for policy changes. It brought to public attention what the paper brought to the profession
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
I know there’s a proverb which says ‘To err is human,’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
Agatha Christie (Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41))
To err is human to forgive is canine.." "Much travel is needed before a raw man is ripened" "The greatest poverty is the lack of intelligence.
M.J.
Albert won’t hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
Christianity is commonly described as a religion of love, but the love of which Christian mystics speak is love of God. Human beings receive love as God’s children, but if they err they risk damnation. The Christian religion is no more defined by universal love than is Buddhism.
John Gray (Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life)
The modern, developed world is experiencing an ever-growing crisis of both chronic immunological diseases and mental health conditions. Perhaps this is not a coincidence, but is instead a pandemic of unbalanced defence systems. This is partially because the bodies and minds we have inherited from our ancestors were honed to survive in a very different environment. Until the health and sanitation revolutions of the twentieth century, humans in all strata of society lived in differing layers of filth, with no access to antibiotics or vaccines. This resulted in a high infectious mortality; those who survived tended to have more aggressive immune systems, prone to err on the side of inflammation. It was also a world of constant inter-human violence and regular exposure to predatory animals. Psychologically, this would have favoured a tendency towards both anxiety about others and also depression-like sickness behaviour during infection.10 Across human history, from generation to generation, there has thus been a leaning towards an ‘inflammatory bias’.
Monty Lyman (The Immune Mind: The Hidden Dialogue Between Your Brain and Immune System)
Son, “Mommy knows best”, but she may not know some things quite well. She is human, bound to err. That is why you do not have to rely solely on her. Seek divine counsel.
Gift Gugu Mona (Dear Son: An Imaginary Letter from a Loving Dad)
To err is human; to forgive, absolutely galling.
Lisa Kleypas
To err is human," Amelia said, "to forgive, absolutely galling.
Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
God is relentless in His pursuit of humanity; He’ll use anything and everything to bring us to the place where we’ll acknowledge our need for Him.
Mike Erre (Astonished: Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God)
To err is human. To count other people's errors is humane
Ljupka Cvetanova (The New Land)
To err is human; to forgive is divine. To forget, for me, is amnesia, and this might cause one to fall prey again. I have no enemies but if you declare yourself as my enemy, I will neither arm you nor will I harm you; and if I have to dig a hole for you to halt you from continuing to pursue me, I will make it just deep enough to make you have to call for help. Who knows who may need to cry for help after a fall into the hole in the future, it could even be the digger himself.   OPEN
Olusegun Obasanjo (My Watch Volume 3: Now and Then)
Politician [10w] To err is human; to shift the blame is political.
Beryl Dov
To Err [10w] To err is human, due to that bottle of wine.
Beryl Dov
error. This is no easy thing to say concerning famous men deserving praise. But to err is human and God has given us reason to struggle to make the best of our nature. Woman
Paul Hoffman (The Last Four Things (The Left Hand of God, #2))
Nag Hammadi, On the Origin of the World, tells a variant of the same story:  … he boasted continually, saying to (the angels) … “I am God, and no other one exists except me.” But when he said these things, he sinned against all of the immortal ones … when Faith saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was angry.… she said, “You err, Samael (i.e., “blind god”). An enlightened, immortal humanity [anthropos] exists before you!”3
Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books))
Use manual sanity checks in data pipelines. When optimizing data processing systems, it’s easy to stay in the “binary mindset” mode, using tight pipelines, efficient binary data formats, and compressed I/O. As the data passes through the system unseen, unchecked (except for perhaps its type), it remains invisible until something outright blows up. Then debugging commences. I advocate sprinkling a few simple log messages throughout the code, showing what the data looks like at various internal points of processing, as good practice — nothing fancy, just an analogy to the Unix head command, picking and visualizing a few data points. Not only does this help during the aforementioned debugging, but seeing the data in a human-readable format leads to “aha!” moments surprisingly often, even when all seems to be going well. Strange tokenization! They promised input would always be encoded in latin1! How did a document in this language get in there? Image files leaked into a pipeline that expects and parses text files! These are often insights that go way beyond those offered by automatic type checking or a fixed unit test, hinting at issues beyond component boundaries. Real-world data is messy. Catch early even things that wouldn’t necessarily lead to exceptions or glaring errors. Err on the side of too much verbosity.
Micha Gorelick (High Performance Python: Practical Performant Programming for Humans)
When we say the Bible is infallible in its origin, we are merely ascribing its origin to a God who is infallible. This is not to say that the biblical writers were intrinsically or in themselves infallible. They were human beings who, like other humans, proved the axiom Errare humanum est, “To err is human.” It is precisely because humans are given to error that, for the Bible to be the Word of God, its human authors required assistance in their task.
R.C. Sproul (What is Reformed Theology?: Understanding the Basics)
The old man with the flaccid face and dour expression grimaced when asked if he were conversant with zoology, mineralogy, or the culinary arts. ‘Not to be secretive,’ he said, ‘I may tell you that I'd given precedence to the study of genealogy. But, since my father's demise, it has been my vagary to remain incognito because of an inexplicable, lamentable, and irreparable family schism. It resulted from a heinous crime, committed at our domicile by an impious scoundrel. To err is human… but his affair was so grievous that only my inherent acumen and consummate tact saved me.
Jim Bernhard (Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock)
Man, as inspired by God, wrote the Scripture; God, for love of Man, wrote Law of Nature. Man shall err in his writing of Scripture; God is perfect in his Law of Nature. Various Scriptures: “Which one will I embrace?” There but one Law for the whole human race. Man’s Scriptures will bring untold aggressions; God’s Law will bring untiring corrections.
Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol
Father Joe grinned. “What is good, and what is evil?” People shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “Islam says good is doing whatever Allah has decreed is good. Evil is the opposite. Hinduism talks about ignorance that causes one to err and those errors are the karma of past lives that hurt one in the present. Not only is evil inevitable in creation, but it is said to be a good thing, a necessary part of the universe, the will of Brahma, the creator. If the gods are responsible for the existence of evil in the world, they either create it willingly—and are thus evil themselves—or are forced to create it by the higher law of karma, which makes them weak. “Buddhism disagrees. In fact, the whole of life for the Buddhist is suffering that stems from the wrong desire to perpetuate the illusion of personal existence. The Noble Truth of Suffering, dukkha, is this: ‘Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.’ Samyutta Nikaya 56, 11. According to that belief, good is the complete abolition of personhood, because that is what ends suffering. “The monotheistic religions go another route. Now listen to this: “‘When you reap your harvest, leave the corners of your field for the poor. When you pluck the grapes in your vineyard, leave those grapes that fall for the poor and the stranger. Do not steal; don’t lie to one another, or deny a justified accusation against you. Don’t use My name to swear to a lie. Don’t extort your neighbor, or take what is his, or keep the wages of a day laborer overnight. Don’t curse a deaf man or put a stumbling block before a blind man. Don’t misuse the powers of the law to give special consideration to the poor or preferential honor to the great; according to what is right shall you judge your neighbor. Don’t stand by when the blood of your neighbor is spilled. Don’t hate your fellow man in your heart but openly rebuke him. Do not take revenge nor bear a grudge. Love your neighbor’s well-being as if it were your own.’ “And overarching all these commandments is the supreme admonition not to be good but to be holy, ‘because I am holy.’” The class looked stunned. “Pretty specific, no?” He smiled. “Especially in contrast to the detachment from life of the Eastern religions. In this, we find perhaps the greatest piece of moral education and legislation ever given to mankind in all human history. Do any of you recognize the source?” “Gospels?” someone guessed. “It’s from the Old Testament of the Jews. From the book of Leviticus.
Naomi Ragen (An Unorthodox Match)
Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world. Given this centrality to our intellectual and emotional development, error shouldn’t be an embarrassment, and cannot be an aberration. On the contrary. As Benjamin Franklin observed in the quote that heads this book, wrongness is a window into normal human nature—into our imaginative minds, our boundless faculties, our extravagant souls.
Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)