“Rationalism in politics, as I have interpreted it, involves an identifiable error, a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge, which amounts to a corruption of the mind. And consequently it is without the power to correct its own short-comings; it has no homeopathic quality; you cannot escape its errors by becoming more sincerely or more profoundly rationalistic.”

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 30, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Rationalism in politics, as I have interpreted it, involves an identifiable error, a misconception with regard to the n…" by Michael Oakeshott?

Michael Oakeshott12

British philosopher 1901–1990

Related quotes

“In spite of mistakes, faulty diagnosis and much error, humanity cannot do without its doctors, its surgeons, and its hospitals. They are urgently needed, and will be for centuries to come…”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Esoteric Healing (1953), p. 481

“It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; I
Lacon (1820)

“The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choose that good (truth!) on the basis, again, of knowledge. The finite mind does not comprehend itself so profoundly, and does not have such power over itself, that it follows its own light.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

“Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Daughter, 1728, p. 204

“Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.”

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

"Only Then Shall We Find Courage", New York Times Magazine (23 June 1946).
1940s

“The history of human knowledge is nothing more than the realization that yesterday's pieties are actually shameful errors.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"France's censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than 'hate speech'" in The Guardian, 2 January 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/02/free-speech-twitter-france

“The analytical equations, unknown to the ancient geometers, which Descartes was the first to introduce into the study of curves and surfaces, are not restricted to the properties of figures, and to those properties which are the object of rational mechanics; they extend to all general phenomena. There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and from obscurities, that is to say more worthy to express the invariable relations of natural things.
Considered from this point of view, mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all perceptible relations, measures times, spaces, forces, temperatures; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired; it grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of the many variations and errors of the human mind.
Its chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to express confused notions. It brings together phenomena the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them.”

Joseph Fourier book The Analytical Theory of Heat

Preliminary Discourse, p.7 Note: often quoted as Mathematics [or mathematical analysis] compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.
The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878)

“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

“Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)
Context: All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

“It is, of course, merely a truism to say that war, like other social or political evils, is the outcome of the bad management of human society, which is, in its turn, due to certain errors or deficiencies. But our task is to discern the sort of error or deficiency.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Michael Oakeshott12

Related quotes

Related topics