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To kill an error is as good a service as,
by Charles Darwin

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

Related topics: Wisdom Think

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting
on his past actions and their motives -
of approving of some and disapproving of others.
- Charles Darwin

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe,
nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws,
but the smallest insect, we wish
to be created at once by special act.
- Charles Darwin

The highest possible stage in moral culture
is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
- Charles Darwin

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin

If the misery of the poor be caused
not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions,
great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
- Charles Darwin

The very essence of instinct is that
it's followed independently of reason.
- Charles Darwin

How paramount the future is to the present
when one is surrounded by children.
- Charles Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed
in any subject as I am in mine.
- Charles Darwin

I have called this principle,
by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term of Natural Selection.
- Charles Darwin

In the struggle for survival,
the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals
because they succeed in adapting
themselves best to their environment.
- Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves,
we do not like to consider our equal.
- Charles Darwin

On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created,
we gain no scientific explanation.
- Charles Darwin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin

What a book a devil's chaplain might write
on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low,
and horribly cruel work of nature!
- Charles Darwin

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped,
probably arboreal in its habits.
- Charles Darwin

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
- Charles Darwin

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts
and grinding out conclusions.
- Charles Darwin

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -
a mere heart of stone.
- Charles Darwin

I love fools' experiments.
I am always making them.
- Charles Darwin

Man tends to increase at a greater rate
than his means of subsistence.
- Charles Darwin

The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design,
no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
- Charles Darwin

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:
it is those who know little, and not those who know much,
who so positively assert that this or that problem
will never be solved by science.
- Charles Darwin

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science,
for they often endure long; but false views,
if supported by some evidence, do little harm,
for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
- Charles Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a
beneficent and omnipotent God
would have designedly created parasitic wasps
with the express intention of their feeding
within the living bodies of caterpillars.
- Charles Darwin

The possession of knowledge does not
kill the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause
for which I am prepared to kill.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

When you have to kill a man,
it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
- Henry David Thoreau

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
- Henry David Thoreau

If you're going to tell people the truth,
be funny or they'll kill you.
- Billy Wilder

Because we believe that our ethnic group,
our society, our political party, our God,
is better than your God, we kill each other.
- Neale Donald Walsch

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The ugliest word in the world is revenge.
It spells hate; it spells fear; it spells greed.
For my loss, I must kill; I must steal - must avenge.
It's your fault; you must pay; you must bleed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you.
Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning.
Questioners sooner or later end up in a library.
Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures,
because scriptures are full of answers.
And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.
- Osho

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails,
and then asks you not to kill him.
- Winston Churchill

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill
a president of the United States, he can do it.
All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's.
- John F. Kennedy

I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia.
I, uh, I wanted to meet interesting
and stimulating people of an ancient culture,
and kill them.
- the movie Full Metal Jacket

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
- John F. Kennedy

Join the army. Visit strange and exotic places.
Meet fascinating people. And kill them.
- Anonymous

An error does not become truth
by reason of multiplied propagation,
nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
- Carl Jung

We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson

I postpone death by living, by suffering,
by error, by risking, by giving, by loving.
- Anais Nin

Ignorance is preferable to error,
and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing
than he who believes what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson

Delay is preferable to error.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself.
- Thomas Jefferson

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

The world is indebted for all triumphs
which have been gained by reason and humanity
over error and oppression.
- Thomas Jefferson

Write your Sad times in Sand,
Write your Good times in Stone.
- George Bernard Shaw

A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

No good comes from hurrying.
- Yiddish Proverb

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill

There is more value in a very good painting
that is completed and on display,
than in an excellent painting
that is still in the artist's studio,
or perhaps still in his mind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.
- Lao Tzu

He who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead;
his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

The River of Life has no meaning,
no good, no bad, no better, no worse,
no love, no hate, no fear, no anger, no joy.
The River of Life has no judgment, no expectation.
The River of Life just IS.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves
to recognize how good things really are.
- Marianne Williamson

Merely to avoid harming others is not enough.
Earn your place in this world by doing good.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no goodness in attempting to coerce
another person into performing a good deed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Good humor is the health of the soul,
sadness is its poison.
- Lord Chesterfield

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie