“But why should one be ashamed of writing badly in spite of knowing better – it’s results that shows errors”
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Frédéric Chopin 30
Polish composer 1810–1849Related quotes

“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”

“The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.”
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.

“One should attend to one's enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one's errors.”
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Source: Our Modern Idol: Mathematical Science (1984), p. 3.

George Pólya, Mathematical Discovery: On Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving (1962)

Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94