“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)
“There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.”
Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)
Context: There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton112
British politician and historian 1834–1902Related quotes
“My men have sometimes failed to take a position, but to defend one, never!”
Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general
Statement to Major Heros von Borcke http://aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=1082 (13 December 1862), as quoted in Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence (1867) by Heros von Borcke, p. 301; this has been paraphrased as "My troops may fail to take a position, but are never driven from one!"
“Leaders stand up for their men. They encourage them to try and defend them when they fail.”
Tom Tugendhat (1973) British politician
Said on Twitter https://twitter.com/TomTugendhat/status/1148919771741741062 about the failiure of Boris Johnson to defend Kim Darroch after a diplomatic cable leak. Quoted by the BBC: Sir Kim Darroch: UK ambassador to US resigns in Trump leaks row https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48937120 (10 July 2019) on the BBC website. Retrieved 11 July 2019.
Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian
Source: The Chaplet https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0304.htm, Chapter V
“To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.”
Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror
Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 459
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)
“A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Source: The Writings of John Lennon
“If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XIII, The Self Inflicted Wounds, p. 176
