Simon Bolivar Quotes

The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.

It is ignorance that causes most mistakes.

Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!

You never know what a fool you can be till life gives you the chance.

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

Obscurity is the realm of error.

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.

Three-fourths of the mistakes a man makes are made because he does not really know what he thinks he knows.

Experience is the schoolmaster of fools.

… fear false knowledge

You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.

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.

Few sometimes may know, when thousands err.

No one is wise at all times.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

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.

We do not find truth groveling through error.

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

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

If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error but I maximize, at the same time, the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life.

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.

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.

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