A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.

Stephen Jay Gould

Quote Topics

Activity Correction Count Errors Failures Honorable Progress Quintessential Science Seeds

Quote Author

Stephen Jay Gould
American - Scientist
September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002

I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activity. God is passionate about hallowing the name of God.

John Piper

Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.

Karl Popper

Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. I say all this because I want very much to talk about the human side of discovery and progress, and it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most non-scientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve.

Jacob Bronowski

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.

Karl Popper

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.

Robert H. Schuller

Anyone can count the seeds of an apple. Who can count the apples in a seed?

Stephen Covey

Anyone can cut an apple open and count the number of seeds. But, who can look at a single seed and count the trees and apples?

Dottie Walters

Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Jules Verne

Not everything that counts can be counted. You can count sales. You can count fans and followers. You can count pins and tweets. But you can't count passion. You can't count commitment. You can't count engagement. You can't count relationships.

John Kremer

The preparations for my new voyage prevented the possiblity of my paying that attention to the correction of my errors, that I should otherwise have done.

Zebulon Pike

We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.

C. V. Raman

Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.

J. G. Ballard

The progress of science is tremendously disorderly, and the motivations that lead to this progress are tremendously varied, and the reasons why scientists go into science, the personal motivations, are tremendously varied. I have said ... that science is a haven for freaks, that people go into science because they are misfits, and that it is a sheltered place where they can spin their own yarn and have recognition, be tolerated and happy, and have approval for it.