“In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.”

"Interview de David Brin" at ActuSF.com (March 2008) http://www.actusf.com/spip/article-5739.html

Variant: The mistake is thinking that there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.
Source: The Lover's Dictionary

XXXI, 2
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Future Proofing You (2021)

Source: Lies My Teacher Told Me

Statement of Purpose: Gay Liberation Front (Dec. 1969)

In 1980, during his inspection tour in Tibet, as quoted in Southern Mongolia: Self-Determination Activist Tortured in Prison and Kept Under House Arrest https://unpo.org/article/19652?id=19652

"On Freedom" in All Life is Problem Solving (1999)
Context: When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.

My Religion / Light in My Darkness, Ch 6 (1927)
Context: Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere … they will say that science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.