A Quote by Francis Bacon

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives

Francis Bacon

Quote Topics

Error Excited Human More Moved Negatives Peculiar Perpetual Than Understanding

Quote Author

Francis Bacon
English - Philosopher
January 22, 1561 - April 9, 1626

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

John Stuart Mill

With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.

Isaac Asimov

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.

Francis Bacon

The model of the educational Kalila Wa-Dimna. These are books of instruction to rulers and humans. The stories unfold a range of human psychology, a vast range of human psychology. The Sultan is being moved from his narrow and bigoted position into a wider, more subtle, more nuanced understanding of human experiences.

Marina Warner

Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity -namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

Mary Baker Eddy

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

Carl Sagan

Probability of human error is considerably higher than that of machine error.

Kenneth Appel

The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Everyone seems so excited by the fact that music is more accessible, people can find new artists more easily and it's cheaper, without focusing on the potential negatives, not least of which is that idiots can more easily listen to your favourite music.

Romesh Ranganathan

As an opinion manager, a campaign consultant, fixing personality negatives is a lot easier than fixing character negatives.

Paul Manafort

I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.

Federico Fellini

For from the error of not knowing, or understanding, what sin is, there necessarily arises another error, that people cannot know or understand what grace is.

Martin Luther

Human paleontology shares a peculiar trait with such disparate subjects as theology and extraterrestrial biology: it contains more practitioners than objects for study.

David Pilbeam

The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.

Samuel Johnson

Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty and free grace; Arminianism emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts the saving grace to the elect; the other extends it to all men on the condition of faith. Both are right in what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. If one important truth is pressed to the exclusion of another truth of equal importance, it becomes an error, and loses its hold upon the conscience. The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.