"Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth." (Anna B Jameson, "A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies", 1854)
"We must therefore discover some method of investigation which allows the mind at every step to lay hold of a clear physical conception, without being committed to any theory founded on the physical science from which that conception is borrowed, so that it is neither drawn aside from the subject in pursuit of analytical subtleties, nor carried beyond the truth by a favourite hypothesis." (James C Maxwell, "On Faraday’s lines of force", 1855)
"It is easily seen from a consideration of the nature of demonstration and analysis that there can and must be truths which cannot be reduced by any analysis to identities or to the principle of contradiction but which involve an infinite series of reasons which only God can see through." (Gottfried W Leibniz, "Nouvelles lettres et opuscules inédits", 1857)
“The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is that all the argument is on one side.” (John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”, 1859)
[…] the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.” (John S Mill, “Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical”, 1864)
"No departure from the truth of nature shall be discovered by the closest scrutiny." (Henry P Robinson, "Pictorial Effect in Photography", 1869)
"Modern discoveries have not been made by large collections of facts, with subsequent discussion, separation, and resulting deduction of a truth thus rendered perceptible. A few facts have suggested an hypothesis, which means a supposition, proper to explain them. The necessary results of this supposition are worked out, and then, and not till then, other facts are examined to see if their ulterior results are found in Nature." (Augustus de Morgan, "A Budget of Paradoxes", 1872)
"Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks", 1873)
"Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel, [journal entry] 1875)
"It would be an error to suppose that the great discoverer seizes at once upon the truth, or has any unerring method of divining it. In all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must be many times as numerous as those that prove well founded. The weakest analogies, the most whimsical notions, the most apparently absurd theories, may pass through the teeming brain, and no record remain of more than the hundredth part. […] The truest theories involve suppositions which are inconceivable, and no limit can really be placed to the freedom of hypotheses." (W Stanley Jevons, "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method", 1877)
“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, “Human, All Too Human: A book for Free Spirits”, 1878)
“It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.” (Thomas H Huxley, “The Progress of Science”, 1887)
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four”, 1890)
"Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood." (Tyron Edwards, "A Dictionary of Thoughts", 1891)
"Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel, [journal entry] 1875)
“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, “Human, All Too Human: A book for Free Spirits”, 1878)
“It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.” (Thomas H Huxley, “The Progress of Science”, 1887)
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four”, 1890)
"Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood." (Tyron Edwards, "A Dictionary of Thoughts", 1891)
"All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified." (Thomas H Huxley, "Science and Education", 1891)
"There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method." (Karl Pearson, “The Grammar of Science”, 1892)
"It is they 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." (Lord John Acton, "The Study of History", [lecture delivered at Cambridge] 1895)
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us." (Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci", 1895)
"The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method." (Karl Pearson, “The Grammar of Science”, 1892)
"It is they 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." (Lord John Acton, "The Study of History", [lecture delivered at Cambridge] 1895)
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us." (Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci", 1895)
"The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
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