“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
The complete political works. Rights of man: being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French Revolution, p. 306
1790s
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
Last update June 13, 2021. History
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Thomas Jefferson456
3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826Related quotes
Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author
Provisions of the Last Will and Testament of Dr. James Rush http://books.google.com/books?id=lSowTqXCyyUC&pg=PA13&dq=%22dreaded+by+the+advocates+of+error%22&hl=en&ei=NCJGTP-fBJ-QnwfB8K2uBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=13&ved=0CGQQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22dreaded%20by%20the%20advocates%20of%20error%22&f=false
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics
As quoted in "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett, in Life, Vol. 7, No. 9, International Edition (24 October 1949), p. 58; sometimes a partial version (the final sentence) is misattributed to Marcel Proust.
Context: There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist
“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
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History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 26
Referenced
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Part II Section II
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1712 to William Roscoe (27 December 1820) <br class="br">1820s
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer
A New View of Society (1813-1816)
Context: All the measures now proposed are only a compromise with the errors of the present systems; but as these errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail.