“A philosopher's renown is increased more by inventing a new error than by repeating a truth that has already been expressed by others.”

“It is more reasonable to remove error from truth, than to venerate error because it is mix'd with truth.”

“Sometimes it is hard to avoid a certain feeling of sadness: when realizing that everything sensible has already, many times over, been excellently expressed—and expressed in vain. And note how well-hidden, pushed into obscurity, drowned by triviality's overwhelming mass—therefore, how important it is that the sensible be repeated again and again, experienced in new individuals over and over with new variations, with a new emphasis, in a new voice—continuously kept alive.”

“To be mad is to keep repeating something that has already been seen as useless, as worthless.”

“We already convert sunlight into beamed energy and send it down to Earth. Except we use it to carry information rather than raw power. To deliver power requires a massive increase in scale, but not inventing new technology.”

“The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.”

“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.”

“Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.”

“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.”

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”