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“We must know the truth; and we must avoid error.”
James separates two intellectual duties—seeking truth and avoiding falsehood—to show that prioritizing one over the other can produce different habits of belief and inquiry.
Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James immediately argues that truth-seeking and error-avoidance are distinct laws rather than two phrasings of one command.
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“Happy is the man who learns from the misfortunes of others.”
Other people’s failures can become instruction when we pay attention to consequences before repeating the same mistake ourselves.
Source note: Moral printed after “The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass”; the fox changes his conduct after observing the ass’s fate.
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“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Custom can disguise error by making the familiar feel legitimate; critical judgment requires re-examining practices that have escaped scrutiny through repetition.
Source note: Common Sense, Introduction; Paine uses the observation to explain the resistance that unfamiliar political arguments may initially provoke.
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Socrates links a worthwhile human life with reflection on beliefs, conduct, and reasons rather than unexamined routine.
Source note: Apology 38a; wording varies by translation.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”
Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.
Source note: The Admirable Crichton, Act 1; Ernest Woolley repeats the paradox while the others struggle to follow it.
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“The thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a risk.”
Choosing among plausible interpretations necessarily involves uncertainty, so sound thinking requires a cautious selection that remains open to confirmation or correction by later events.
Source note: How We Think, Chapter VIII. The sentence concerns choosing the idea or principle relevant to a perplexing situation; the next clause says the prudent thinker selects warily, subject to later confirmation or frustration.