“There have been errors in the administration of the most enlightened men.”

— Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough

Rex v. Lambert and Perry (1810), 2 Camp. 405.

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Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough 21

Lord Chief Justice of England 1750–1818

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“My friends, I tell you that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors — gross errors — that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to men. And, in consequence, they have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite; and should these qualities be carried, not only into the projected villages, but into Paradise itself, a Paradise would no longer be found!”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Statement (21 August 1817), as quoted by Jim Herrick, in "Bradlaugh and Secularism: 'The Province of the Real'" (1990) http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/s1990c33.htm.

“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book IV, Ch. 20, sec. 17
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“Malignity, therefore, may dart its shafts, but no earthly power can deprive me of the consolation of knowing that I have not, in the whole course of my Administration (however numerous they may have been) committed an intentional error.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s

“Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 69
Context: If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

“Pascal scornfully said that simple workmen had been able to convince of error those great men that are called 'philosophers'. It was, then, these unlearned men… who were most ready to believe 'what they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands'.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

Religion and the rise of modern science, 1972

“Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.

“Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

United Nations radio interview http://streams.gandhiserve.org/einstein.html recorded in Einstein's study, Princeton, New Jersey (1950)
1950s
Context: Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit... not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil.

“Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

This has sometimes been paraphrased: "My failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent".
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Context: I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.

“This body of administrative literature can be taught to young men and women; perhaps also to the aged, if they are not hopeless. And it is possible by tests to discover whether or how far the process of communicating and imparting administrative knowledge has been successful, [although] not precisely in all cases. Moreover, and this is highly important, young men and women who have more or less mastered the principles, maxims, and axioms of administrative science can now, by what is called in-training, fortify their formal knowledge by living experiences in and with administration. There is, then, a science of administration, in the sense in which I have used the term, and it can be taught, learned, and used.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 662

“Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"1896", p. 20
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

“There have been errors in the administration of the most enlightened men.”

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Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough 21

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