Rounding Error Quotes

The velocities and forces involved in anything at orbital altitudes were enough to kill a human with just the rounding error. At their speeds, the friction from air too thin to breathe would set them on fire. ~ James S.A. Corey

Freighter pilot Hal Spacejock has a life to die for: His very own cargo ship, a witty and intelligent flight computer ... and a debt so big it makes the GFC look like a rounding error. Hal's an upright sort of guy, and he won't take jobs from gun runners, drug smugglers or politicians. On the other hand, the finance company's brutal enforcer is on his doorstep, and Hal has barely twenty-four hours to pay him off. Miss the deadline and he - and his ship - will go under. Way, way, under. ~ Simon Haynes

Later in conversation he corrected himself: It was in fact 1.1 million pigs. The difference might seem like just a rounding error, he told me, but if you ever had to kill an "extra" hundred thousand pigs and dispose of their bodies in bulldozed pits, you'd remember the difference as significant. ~ David Quammen

Of the many species that have existed on earth
estimates run as high as fifty billion
more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.
more than a rounding error. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Mistakes are the foundation of achievement. ~ Steven Magee

If unbridled licence of speech and writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of nature, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. ~ Pope Leo XIII

The knowledge and reason speak, ignorance and error shout. ~ Arturo Graf

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people. ~ Ernest Renan

Still, through a complex combination of optimism and longing and bravado, you would round it up. While a cruder name for this process is lying , one could make a case that delusion is a variant of generosity. After all, you practiced rounding up on Kevin from the day he was born.

Me, I'm a stickler. I prefer my photographs in focus. At the risk of tautology, I like people only as much as I like them. I lead an emotional life of such arithmetic precision, carried to two or three digits after the decimal, that I am even willing to allow for degrees of agreeableness in my own son. In other words, Franklin: I leave the $17. ~ Lionel Shriver

In rural North Carolina, you can get lots of great advice about how to clean and quarter a deer carcass, but we didn't really have anyone to ask for video advice, so we just kept learning through trial and error. ~ Rhett McLaughlin

No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. ~ Ann Radcliffe

Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo

I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion. I've found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap. ~ Jane Hamilton

It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. - THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion ~ Jon Meacham

Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else. ~ Noam Chomsky

Confusing the thing observed with the mind of the observer, of constructing not a picture of external reality but simply a mirror of the thinker. Can this danger be avoided without falling into an opposite but related error, that of separating too deeply the observer and the thing observed, subject and object, and again falsifying our view of the world? There is no way out of these difficulties - you might as well try running Cataract Canyon without hitting a rock. Best to launch forth boldly, with or without life jackets, keep your matches dry and pray for the best. ~ Edward Abbey

Keep any description of trouble or sickness or error minimal, for there is something inside which is listening, and it says, 'Oh! You like this! I will make you a lot more of it.' ~ Ervin Seale

A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life. ~ E.B. White

From the beginning of my Reformation I have asked God to send me neither dreams, nor visions, nor angels, but to give me the right understanding of His Word, the Holy Scriptures; for as long as I have God's Word, I know that I am walking in His way and that I shall not fall into any error or delusion. ~ Martin Luther

Every player in every game is subjected to a cold and ceaseless accounting; no ball is thrown and no base is gained without an instant responding judgment - ball or strike, hit or error, yea or nay - and an ensuing statistic. This encompassing neatness permits the baseball fan, aided by experience and memory, to extract from a box score the same joy, the same hallucinatory reality, that prickles the scalp of a musician when he glances at a page of his score of Don Giovanni and actually hears bassos and sopranos, woodwinds and violins. ~ Roger Angell

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Each journey is different for every individual work and for every writer. The first error is never to begin; the second is never to finish. ~ Don Roff

I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people. And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I think Charles Dickens got it quite right. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. ~ Daniel Keys Moran

Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, popularity or the amount of its yearly offerings. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror. ~ Martin Rees

For me, form is something I locate in the process of writing the poems. What I mean is, I start scribbling, and then try to form the poem - on a typewriter or on my computer - and, by trial and error, try to find the right shape. I just try to keep forming the poem in different ways until it feels right to me. ~ Matthew Zapruder

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. ~ Edward Gibbon

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul.
It had indeed been an error.
It had been late one night
of course.
It had been a difficult day
of course.
There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system
of course.
And he had, of course, been slightly drunk.
In other words, all the usual conditions that bring on a bout of soul searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error. ~ Douglas Adams

The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority. ~ Theodor Adorno

When the article of justification is lost, nothing remains except error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry. ~ Martin Luther

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. ~ Bertrand Russell

The path to Heaven is narrow, rough and full of wearisome and trying ascents, nor can it be trodden without great toil; and therefore wrong is their way, gross their error, and assured their ruin who, after the testimony of so many thousands of saints, will not learn where to settle their footing. ~ Robert Southwell

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. ~ Horace Mann

Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through ~ A.R. Ammons

In belief in what? In love with what? In hope for what? - There's no doubt that these weak people - at some time or another they also want to be the strong people, some day their "kingdom" is to arrive - they call it simply "the kingdom of God" as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! Only to experience that, one has to live a long time, beyond death - in fact, people must have an eternal life, so they can also win eternal recompense in the "kingdom of God" for that earthly life "in faith, in love, in hope." Recompense for what? Recompense through what? In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity inspiring terror, he set that inscription over the gateway into his hell:"Eternal love also created me." Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its "eternal blessedness" it would, in any event, be more fitting to let the inscription stand "Eternal hate also created me" - provided it's all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie! For what is the bliss of that paradise? Perhaps we might have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate in such matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint: "In the kingdom of heaven" he says as gently as a lamb, "the blessed will see the punishment of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan's "form follows function," what they meant was,
form should follow function. And if function is hard enough, form is forced to follow it,
because there is no effort to spare for error.
Wild animals are beautiful because they have hard lives. ~ Paul Graham

I turned to Kitty Sue and surprised myself by answering honestly, "I'm fine. Lee's fine. Lee's more fine than me. I'm having troubles adjusting. Lee seems pretty sure of himself. Lee seems pretty sure of everything."

This, I realized, was true about Lee always. I'd never met someone as confident in my life. Well, maybe Hank, but Hank's confidence was quiet and assured. And there was Lee's best friend, Eddie, of course. But Eddie was like Lee's twin, separated at birth, cut from the same cloth. Lee's confidence, and Eddie's, wasn't like Hank's. It was cocky and assertive.

"And you aren't sure?" Kitty Sue asked.

I looked at her and thought maybe I should have lied. It was too late now.

"Nope. He scares me," I admitted.

She nodded. "Yep, he's pretty dang scary."

I stared. My God, the woman was talking about her son.

"You agree?"

She looked at Lee then back at me. "Honey, that boy drives me to distraction. It's like he's not of my loins. I don't even know where he came from. If Ally hadn't been the exact replica of Lee, personality-wise, except female I would have wondered if there was a mix up at the hospital."

I kept staring. Kitty Sue kept talking.

"Hank's just like his Dad. Smart, cautious, controlled, taking only calculated risks. I'm sure Lee calculates his risks, but I think he allows for a much larger margin for error and counts on ... I don't know what he counts ~ Kristen Ashley

It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We did not fall because of a moral error; we fell because of an intellectual error: that of taking the phenomenal world as real. Therefore we are morally innocent. ~ Philip K. Dick

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too. ~ Tim Fargo

Wisdom or accident, at length, recall us from our error, and offers to us some object capable of producing a pleasing, yet lasting effect, which effect, therefore, we call happiness. Happiness has this essential difference from what is commonly called pleasure, that virtue forms its basis, and virtue being the offspring of reason, may be expected to produce uniformity of effect. ~ Ann Radcliffe

Childishness and childlikeness are two very different things. To know a childlike person, is to know a very mature person; to know a childish person, is to know a very immature person. To know childlikeness is to know original wisdom; to know childishness is to know original error. And there are many children more mature than adults, many adults less mature than children. ~ C. JoyBell C.