Mistaken Quotes - Page 7

• I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [...] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Meaningful, Lying, Believe

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• Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Men, Mind, Liberty

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1825). “Works”, p.198

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• In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

  François-René de Chateaubriand

  Numbers, Judging, May

  "Sketches of English Literature: With Considerations on the Spirit of the Times, Men, and Revolutions". Book by François-René de Chateaubriand, translated by Henry Colburn, Volume II, p.36, 1836.

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• I think those who say that you can't tango if you are not Argentine are mistaken. Tango was an immigrant music... so it does not have a nationality. It's only passport is feeling.

  Carlos Gavito

  Music, Dance, Thinking

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• The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Logic, Sometimes, Scientist

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• Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken - errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Philosophy

  "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters " by Yevgeny Zamyatin. As translated by Mirra Ginsburg, in "A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin", 1923.

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• I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.

  Alexander Pope

  Strong, Men, Thinking

  Alexander Pope (1961). “Poems: Pastoral poetry, and An essay on criticism”

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• There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.

  Samuel Smiles

  Character, Genuine, Difficult

  Samuel Smiles (1873). “Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance”, p.400

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• I say, of the Congress, then, this - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Men, Leader, Spirit

  "New Lamps for Old". Nine articles by Sri Aurobindo in the "Indu Prakash" (a Bombay daily newspaper), August 28, 1893.

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• I have a simple answer to any American patriot who claims that there is no conflict between his love of country and his desire to hitch our fate to the United Nations: “You're mistaken.” And, therefore, I'm thinking of adding this corollary to my General Rule of patriotism: The more intellectually consistent and pro-U.N. you are, the less patriotic you are likely to be. I haven't thought that all the way through, but it seems right to me.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Country, Patriotic, Fate

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• We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for "productivity"

  Douglas Adams

  Technology, Thinking, Should Have

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• Photography is a witness against the mistaken opinion that art is an imitation of nature.

  Heinrich Heine

  Photography, Art, Opinion

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• It upset me that, five days after the hurricane hit down in New Orleans, the President's plan was for a day of prayer. I would have thought a truck of food. A day of prayer. Now, maybe I'm mistaken here and, again, I'm not a scientific expert, but isn't a hurricane officially an act of God? Isn't a day of prayer kind of redundant? Hasn't God already made up his mind on that sort of thing? So we do a day of prayer. The President has his stupid day of prayer. Three days later, Hurricane Rita hits. Somebody must have said something... something like, is that all you got?

  Jon Stewart

  Prayer, Stupid, New Orleans

  Stand-up performance at Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005.

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• I certainly think the antagonism came out of a mistaken notion amongst the Indian people that the Chinese aggressed on us, and they thought, Indian people

  Subramanian Swamy

  Thinking, People, Chinese

  "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age", lsopenvault01.wgbh.org. February 12, 1987.

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• I think that if you believe in regime change, you're mistaken. In 2013, we put 600 tons of weapons - us, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar - into the war against [Bashar] Assad. By pushing Assad back, we did create a safe space.

  Rand Paul

  War, Believe, Thinking

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome; in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.

  Mark Twain

  Years, Weather, San Francisco

  Attributed in Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949)

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• Enlightenment is beyond self-improvement and spiritual seeking. It is the final resolution of a case of mistaken identity. It is the direct recognition of your eternal nature and the seeing through of who you have falsely believed yourself to be.

  Gary Crowley

  Spiritual, Self, Enlightenment

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• I have the courage to be mistaken.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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• A teacher, therefore, who would think that he could prepare himself for his mission through study alone would be mistaken. The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.

  Maria Montessori

  Teacher, Thinking, Tasks

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• There are other kinds of emotional pain that emerge from our own mistaken thinking. As we surrender that pain, we are inviting into our thought system a guide who will lead us to different thoughts. It’s like the song “Amazing Grace”: I was blind and now I see.

  Marianne Williamson

  Song, Pain, Emotional

  "A Conversation with Marianne Williamson: Powerful pioneer in new thought and spirituality". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I think I would have liked to have been a twin... Sometimes my sisters and I get mistaken for twins, and I always take it as a compliment.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Thinking, Twins, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Inspirational Psychology includes the practical application of identifying the thoughts and mistaken beliefs that cause us pain, along with a contemplative practice to discover our true nature, which is Love.

  Lee L Jampolsky

  Pain, Practice, Psychology

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• If the British think they can simply detach from the continent and sail towards the USA or China, then they are mistaken.

  Yanis Varoufakis

  Thinking, Usa, China

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• Religious life is about something real in human experience that is not constrained by what Wittgenstein called 'all that is the case'. In this sense Heidegger is not simply 'mistaken' - he just asks us, as philosophers mostly do, to think more carefully about what we're saying.

  George Pattison

  Religious, Real, Thinking

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Believe, Men, Ideas

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