Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

To avoid being drawn into error, keep a firm grip on the truth.

What convinces is not necessarily true-it is merely convincing: a note for asses.

Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.

There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.

Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

There is no original truth, only original error.

Error is always more busy than truth.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

No one who lives in error is free.

Men are not necessarily more zealous for truth than they are for error.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

Spurn not a seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth.

Five hundred years ago a person in error was a person searching for the truth.

You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself.

We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

Dark Error's other hidden side is truth.

We do not find truth groveling through error.

No doubt about it: error is the rule, truth is the accident of error.