“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.” (John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, 1690)
“Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Sprüche in Prosa”, 1840)
“Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth.” (William Whewell, “Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England”, 1852)
"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." (Jules Verne, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, 1864)
“Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together [...].” (Thomas Carlyle, “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, 1899)
“[…] to kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.” (Charles R Darwin, “More Letters of Charles Darwin”, Vol 2, 1903)
“To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Philosophical Occasions”, 1953)
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