Belief is an equilibrium, and that is just the trouble.
Erring
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
—Cunningham
We invent metrics partly to dignify arguments, but mostly to disguise them.
Untried beliefs are the most firmly held.
There are entire fields, like psychiatry and philosophy, devoted chiefly to exploding the errors that they create.
A man should be pleased to make subtle errors; it means he has avoided the obvious ones.
The inability to fathom a design without a designer leads to hostility to markets in half of the world, and hostility to Darwin in the other half.
To make a grave error clearly and follow it through consistently will place a man among the greatest of philosophers.
It is so much easier not to be wrong than to be right.
In the most intractable arguments, one party regards as a question of degree what the other regards as one of kind.
Spend enough time mastering a complex system of ideas and you end up believing it.