Statement with respect to both Catholics and Protestants written after his work On the Errors of the Trinity
Michael Servetus—A Solitary Quest for the Truth (2006)
“If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.”
Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285
1920s
Aphorism 42
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.
Maxim 331, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Unos mueren porque sienten y otros viven porque no sienten. Y assí, unos son necios porque no mueren de sentimiento, y otros lo son porque mueren de él.
Maxim 208 (p. 118)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit schadet.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
Maxim 310, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
“I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
p, 125
The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
