John Stuart Mill Quotes

It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs.

There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

Most of what we know or assume to know is wrong one way or another.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.

Mistakes can occur during hostilities.

Every error is truth abused.

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.

When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?

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

Error is created; truth is eternal.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

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.

The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.

Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.

Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error.

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.

Custom without truth is error grown old.

If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error; if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.

Error is worse than ignorance.