Stephen Jay Gould Quote

Orthodoxy can be as stubborn in science as in religion. I do not know how to shake it except by vigorous imagination that inspires unconventional work and contains within itself an elevated potential for inspired error. As the great Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto wrote: Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. Not to mention a man named Thomas Henry Huxley who, when not in the throes of grief or the wars of parson hunting, argued that irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

"Bathybius and Eozoon", pp. 243–244 - The Panda's Thumb (1980)