A Quote by James A. Garfield

I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error. — © James A. Garfield
I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.
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.
It is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.
My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.
Many people compare the agitation of MNS with Shiv Sena because of the mode of agitation. But the main difference is that while Shiv Sena launched an agitation for the poor Marathi unemployed youth, the agitation of MNS is directed against the 'goondaism' of North Indians.
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
It is too often believed that a person in his progress towards perfection passes from error to truth; that when he passes on from one thought to another, he must necessarily reject the first. But no error can lead to truth. The soul passing through its different stages goes from truth to truth, and each stage is true; it goes from lower truth to higher truth.
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away.
Again, men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end ... It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of the truth
The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.
All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.
Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken - errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.
Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.
You can't lock away a problem and throw away the key. I don't know if it's an unpopular view or a popular view, but it's the truth.
The Clinton investigation was a completed investigation that the FBI had been deeply involved in, so I had an opportunity to understand all the facts and apply those facts against the law as I understood them. This investigation was under way - still going when I was fired. So it's nowhere near in the same place.
Popular culture as a whole is popular, but in today's fragmented market it's a jostle of competing unpopular popular cultures. As the critic Stanley Crouch likes to say, if you make a movie and 10 million people go see it, you'll gross $100 million - and 96 per cent of the population won't have to be involved. That alone should caution anyone about reading too much into individual examples of popular culture.
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