Norman O. Brown Quotes

Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.

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

We do not find truth groveling through error.

Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.

Truth burns up error.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

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

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Truth is immortal; error is mortal.

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

I have no interest in being wrong, so if I am, please correct me. I don't want to be wrong. There's nothing in it for you or for me to be wrong.

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

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.

Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.

That which you know, know not; and that which you see, see not.

Truth is in all things, even partly, in error.

Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not.