Mistake Quotes - page 82
Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.
Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.
Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.
And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.
Robert G. Ingersoll
The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread-a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. To them hell was a burning reality-they could see the smoke and flames. The Devil was no myth. He was an actual person, a rival of God, an enemy of mankind. They thought that the important business of this life was to save your soul-that all should resist and scorn the pleasures of sense, and keep their eyes steadily fixed on the golden gate of the New Jerusalem. They were unbalanced, emotional, hysterical, bigoted, hateful, loving, and insane. They really believed the Bible to be the actual word of God-a book without mistake or contradiction. They called its cruelties, justice-its absurdities, mysteries-its miracles, facts, and the idiotic passages were regarded as profoundly spiritual.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Education is a slow process, and may not come too quickly. Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed. They help to so force the march of events that the people will not have time to find out, by the study of their experience, that their troubles have been due to the rejection of competition. If this lesson shall not be learned in a season, the past will be repeated in the future, in which case we shall have to turn for consolation to the doctrine of Nietzsche that this is bound to happen anyhow, or to the reflection of Renan that, from the point of view of Sirius, all these matters are of little moment.
Benjamin Tucker
Only those with their eyes open to the world of nature are capable of uncovering its truth. Everything springs from a sense of gratitude toward nature. Aikido, though praised as a healthful system of self-defense techniques, would be nothing apart from the laws of the great universe. The martial way begins and ends with courtesy, itself an attitude of thankfulness to and reverence for nature. To be mistaken on this basic point is to make of the martial arts no more than weapons of injury and death.
The very name Aikido indicates its dependence on the laws of nature, which we term ki. Aikido means the way to harmony with ki. That is to say, Aikido is a discipline to make the heart of nature our own heart, to understand love for all things, and to become one with nature. Techniques and physical strength have limits; the great way of the universe stretches to infinity.
Koichi Tohei
With Goya we do not think of the studio or even of the artist at work. We think only of the event. Does this imply that 'The Third of May' is a kind of superior journalism, the record of an incident in which depth of focus is sacrificed to an immediate effect? I am ashamed to say that I once thought so; but the longer I look at this extraordinary picture and at Goya's other works, the more clearly I recognize that I was mistaken.
Francisco Goya
I often tell people to make no mistake about it-enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being more or less happy. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.
Adyashanti
Kant recognized that values, like beliefs, are subjective states of mind which have an objective content as well. Therefore, both values and beliefs are either correct or mistaken. A value judgment is like an empirical or theoretical judgment in that it claims to be true not merely to be felt.
Mark Sagoff
For though Jeffrey made a great mistake in the commencement, he was sufficiently chastised for it, and from the time he was sensible of his fault, he has been uniform in a more fair and honourable mode of criticism than some who profess to be more decidedly my admirers. In fact, he has done as much as could be expected from one who was once my open enemy...
Lord Byron
If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, the writer celebrated in other ways but very little in mathematics, spoke somewhat childishly of the shape of the earth when he derided those who declared the earth had the shape of a ball. So it ought not to surprise students if such should laugh at us also. Mathematics is written for mathematicians to whom these our labors, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something even to the ecclesiastical state the headship of which your Holiness now occupies.(Author's preface to de revolutionibus)
Nicolaus Copernicus
It is hard, virtually impossible, to convey just how cruel the Second Chechen War was, how pitiless the master of the Kremlin's killing machine. The hardest thing for me, as a reporter, as a human being, to bear was to witness the colossal mistake made by the West's leaders who cuddled up to Vladimir Putin while the evidence of his war crimes in Chechnya, and the crimes against humanity committed when the FSB blew up Moscow apartment buildings, was overwhelming.
John Sweeney (journalist)
The present wind of compassion to some extent blew up, and to some extent was blown up artificially, in the two or three years before the general election and has since been prolonged by Princess Diana's death. It is now being replaced by normal politics which will lead eventually to a resumption of the gnarled, sceptical mistrust of all politicians from which Mr Blair will not be exempt and of which Lord Tebbit is the master. It would be a pity if Conservatives were to mistake a temporary aberration for a permanent obsession and were to addict themselves to a style of thinking derived from a period which is passing.
Maurice Cowling
There's only one way to classify Bob Clemente and that's as the strangest hitter in all baseball. Figure him out one way and he'll kill you another. You can be having your best day against everybody else and he'll treat you as though you had nothing. It's so hard to say what he's going to hit or what should be thrown to him. He's very strong and is extremely quick with his hands. You look at him swinging sometimes on his front foot, sometimes on his rear, sometimes with both feet off the ground, and you're inclined to think, ‘This guy can't hit the ball.' That's the biggest mistake you can make and I've made a few of them against him.
Roberto Clemente
He reacted more to rookies than to guys who had been around for awhile, maybe because he would've liked someone to have helped him when he was a rookie. Clemente had known the same problems – the new language, getting acclimated to the big league atmosphere, how to deal with the media, where to eat on the road, how to dress. Sangy got picked off twice in one game. Robby came into the clubhouse, got a big piece of cardboard and put two sticks through it. He told Sangy to pretend it was a machine that he would use to take control of Sangy when he got on base. We laughed for 20 minutes, but it made Sangy realize he didn't have to stick his head in his locker if he made a costly mistake in a game, that we were all in this thing together. That's a valuable lesson and it could've saved Sangy a couple of years anxiety because he learned right away that no teammate holds a player completely responsible for losing a game.
Roberto Clemente
Well it was a bit of a conundrum because his actions in his kind of business had a real ugliness. It's power and violence and murder and mayhem and menace. And yet, I thought it was a mistake as an actor to predetermine or prejudge whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. You can't go into any characterization with that opinion or attitude or approach because it's sudden death. What it will convey ultimately is a one-dimensional character – the figure in the black hat that you've you seen countless time...
Benjamin Bratt
It was a turning point in my programming career when I realized that I didn't have to win every argument. I'd be talking about code with someone, and I'd say, "I think the best way to do it is A." And they'd say, "I think the best way to do it is B. I'd say, "Well no, it's really A." And they'd say, "Well, we want to do B." It was a turning point for me when I could say, "Fine. Do B. It's not going to hurt us that much if I'm wrong. It's not going to hurt us that much if I'm right and you do B, because, we can correct mistakes. So lets find out if it's a mistake."
Ward Cunningham
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!
Franklin D. Roosevelt
[Replying to the criticism of J. P. Cooper] I hope to show that he has arrived at a mistaken view from partial, and partially misinterpreted, evidence. In a field in which things are far from clear or straightforward this is neither surprising nor shocking; it is more disconcerting to find that one who so readily chastises others for their supposed failings should himself be strangely inclined to inaccuracy in discussing other people's views and even in transcribing documents. A self-appointed hound of heaven ought to be more precise in his quest.
Geoffrey Elton
Despite Newton's belated appreciation of Euclid's geometry, he set it aside as an undergraduate and immediately turned to Descartes' Geometrie, a much more difficult text. Newton read a few pages... and immediately got stuck. ...The second time through, he progressed a page or two further before running into more difficulties. Again, he read it from the beginning, this time getting further still. He continued this process until he mastered Descartes' text. Had Newton mastered Euclid first, Descartes' analytic geometry would have been much easier to understand. Newton later advised others not to make the same mistake.
But Descartes had ignited Newton's interest in mathematics, an interest that bordered on obsession.
René Descartes
