George Perkins Marsh Quotes

It is men of science who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history.

The incorrectness and weaknesses of a theory cause other minds to formulate the problems more exactly and in this way scientific progress is made.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Today's truth is tomorrow's null hypothesis-and next years's error.

We now know that if the crops fail, it was not caused by demons. Centuries of scientific dialogue has made a difference.

Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.

It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it deserves.

Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

I hope the necessity will at length be seen of establishing institutions, here as in Europe, where every branch of science, useful at this day, may be taught in it's highest degrees.

Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?

Time sets all things right. Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.

The Church has ever proved indestructible. Her persecutors have failed to destroy her; in fact, it was during times of persecution that the Church grew more and more; while the persecutors themselves, and those whom the Church would destroy, are the very ones who came to nothing. . . .Again, errors have assailed her; but in fact, the greater the number of errors that have arisen, the more has the truth been made manifest. . . . Nor has the Church failed before the assaults of demons: for she is like a tower of refuge to all who fight against the Devil.

There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.

Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

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.

What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?

Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not so much the causes of the different success of their labours, as the peculiar nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession.

Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.

The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.