Quote Origin: Give Me a Good Fruitful Error Any Time, Full of Seeds, Bursting with Its Own Corrections

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Vilfredo Pareto? John Bartlett? Charles P. Curtis Jr.? Ferris Greenslet? Stephen Jay Gould? Apocryphal?

Picture of fruits and seeds from Unsplash

Question for Quote Investigator: Scientific observations are often inexact. Yet, this inexactitude can be helpful because it facilitates the formulation of theories that generate predictions which are approximately correct. These intermediary theories are valuable because they provide a stepping stone toward achieving successor theories which are more comprehensive and more precise. Over time as observations improve in accuracy, novel theories can be built on previous ideas and can generate superior predictions.

The prominent Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto has been credited with the following statement which embraces the utility of “fruitful error”:

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

Unfortunately, I have never seen a solid citation supporting this attribution, and I have become skeptical. Pareto received credit in the prestigious reference book “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”, but strangely no citation was given. Would you please explore the provenance of this quotation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI believes that the ascription to Vilfredo Pareto is incorrect. Instead, QI thinks Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet should receive credit for this quotation. In 1945 these two authors published a compilation of quotations titled “The Practical Cogitator: Or, The Thinker’s Anthology”, and the earliest match for the statement under examination appeared in this book.

Confusion occurred because the target statement was located within an entry for Vilfredo Pareto. The entry began with a translation of text written by Pareto about the German scientist Johannes Kepler:1

PARETO 1848-1923
It was a happy circumstance for the beginning of astronomy that in Kepler’s time the observations of Mars were not too exact. If they had been, Kepler would not have discovered that the curve described by the planet was an ellipse and he would have failed to discover the law of planetary motion.

This entry continued, and the full text from Pareto consisted of two paragraphs with a total of 149 words. These words were followed by two sentences written in a slightly smaller font. These final sentences were not written by Pareto; instead, they were commentary composed by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2

Give me a good fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

This mistake corresponds to a known error mechanism based on the misreading of neighboring expressions. A reader sometimes inadvertently transfers the ascription of one statement to a contiguous statement.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Curtis and Greenslet did not identify the source of their Kepler excerpt, but QI has traced it to the 1916 book “Trattato di Sociologia Generale” which was translated and published in English as four volumes in 1935 under the title “The Mind and Society”. The following passage occurred in volume one. The translation was different, but the match was clear:3

It was a fortunate circumstance for the foundation of celestial mechanics that in Kepler’s time observations of the planet Mars were not very exact. If they had been he would not have detected an ellipse in the curve traversed by that planet and so would not have discovered the laws of planetary movement.

QI searched Pareto’s book to find a match for the target quotation containing the “fruitful error” phrase; however, the quotation was absent. This provided further evidence that Pareto did not write the quotation.

In 1945 the quotation appeared as a comment in “The Practical Cogitator” as stated previously.

In 1946 “Good Housekeeping” magazine published a two-page spread titled “Memory Lane” which presented a miscellaneous collection of quotations including the following:4

VILFREDO PARETO SAID IT
Give me a good fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

In 1947 George Jean Nathan published “The Theatre Book of the Year 1946-1947”. Nathan included an instance while crediting Pareto:5

There is more reality in a fanciful play like this of Synge’s than in any number of the superficially factual ones. In even the errors of the fanciful there is a call to mature reflection that is not always heard in the mathematics of what passes for truth. “Give me your good fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections,” wrote Pareto, “and you can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”

In 1948 the quotation appeared in the 12th edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” edited by Christopher Morley. This instance omitted the word “good”. No citation was specified although the entry did claim that the passage was a “Comment on Kepler”:6

VILFREDO PARETO [1848-1923]
Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
Comment on Kepler

The quotation was not present in the 11th edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” in 1937.7 This fact supports the hypothesis that the quotation first appeared in 1945.

Intriguingly, the connection of the quotation to one of the authors of “The Practical Cogitator” was recalled in the 1974 book “Computers and Man” by Richard C. Dorf:8

The computer knows how to vanquish error, but before we lose ourselves in celebration of the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and probing until they found better approaches for dealing with it. “Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections,” Ferris Greenslet wrote. “You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”

In 1977 the statement appeared in “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: A Selection of Scientific Quotations” edited by Alan L. Mackay:9

Vilfredo Pareto 1848-1923
Give me fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
[Comment on Kepler]

In 1978 well-known biologist Stephen Jay Gould published a column titled “Bathybius Meets Eozoon” in “Natural History” magazine.10 The column was reprinted in the collection “The Panda’s Thumb” in 1980.11 Gould used the quotation while crediting Pareto:

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.”

In 1999 the quotation appeared in “The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)” edited by John Shanahan:12

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
Vilfredo Pareto, 1848-1923

In 2001 Gould’s book “The Panda’s Thumb” was translated into Italian. Thus, an Italian version of the quotation is now circulating although Pareto did not write it:13

Come ha scritto Vilfredo Pareto: « Datemi sempre un errore fruttuoso, pieno di promesse, ricco delle sue stesse correzioni . Potete tenere per voi la vostra sterile verità ».

In 2002 the 17th Edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” was published. The book contained the entry ascribing the quotation to Vilfredo Pareto.14

In 2012 the 18th Edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” was published. The entry for Vilfredo Pareto was removed.15

In conclusion, QI believes that the statement under examination first appeared in a collection of quotations titled “The Practical Cogitator” in 1945. The statement was composed by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet who were the editors of the book. The editors were commenting on a passage written by Vilfredo Pareto. Confusion occurred because the comment by Curtis and Greenslet was adjacent to the passage by Pareto.

Image Notes: Picture of fruits and seeds from Julia Zolotova at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Greg Priest whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Priest pointed out that Stephen Jay Gould employed the quotation while crediting Pareto. Thanks also to quotation specialist Mardy Grothe who traced the quotation back to the 12th edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”. Grothe noted that the reference work did not provide a citation.

  1. 1945, The Practical Cogitator: Or, The Thinker’s Anthology, Selected and Edited by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet, Entry: Pareto, Quote Page 55, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  2. 1945, The Practical Cogitator: Or, The Thinker’s Anthology, Selected and Edited by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet, Entry: Pareto (Comment at the end of the entry), Quote Page 55, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  3. 1935, The Mind and Society [Trattato di Sociologia Generale] by Vilfredo Pareto, Volume 1: Non-Logical Conduct, Translation by Andrew Bongiorno and Arthur Livingston, Chapter 5: Pseudo-scientific Theories, Section: 540, Quote Page 322 and 323, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  4. 1946 June, Good Housekeeping, Volume 122, Number 6, Memory Lane by The Staff, Quote Page 30, Column 1, Hearst Magazines. New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  5. 1947, The Theatre Book of the Year 1946-1947 by George Jean Nathan, Review of: The Playboy of the Western World, Date: October 26, 1946, Start Page 136, Quote Page 138, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  6. 1948 Copyright (1951 Reprint), Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Twelfth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, Original Editor: John Bartlett, Editor: Christopher Morley, Section: Vilfredo Pareto, Quote Page 1198, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with Kindle edition) ↩︎
  7. 1937 Copyright (1938 reprint), Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, Eleventh Edition, Edited by Christopher Morley and Louella D. Everett, (There is no entry for Vilfredo Pareto), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  8. 1974, Computers and Man by Richard C. Dorf (University of California, Davis), Chapter 13: Cybernetics, Artificial Intelligence and the Social Consequences of Computers, Quote Page 427, Boyd & Fraser Publishing Company, San Francisco, California. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  9. 1977, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: A Selection of Scientific Quotations, Selected by Alan L. Mackay, Section: Vilfredo Pareto 1848-1923, Quote Page 115, The Institute of Physics, Bristol and London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  10. 1978 April, Natural History, Volume 87, Number 4, This View of Life: Bathybius Meets Eozoon by Stephen Jay Gould, Start Page 16, Quote Page 22, American Museum of Natural History, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  11. 1980, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould, Chapter 23: Bathybius and Eozoon, Start Page 236, Quote Page 244, W. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  12. 1999, The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less), Edited by John Shanahan, Chapter: Truth, Lies, and Deception, Quote Page 88, Cliff Street Books: Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  13. 2009 (First published in Italian in 2001), Il pollice del panda. Riflessioni sulla storia naturale (The Panda’s Thumb: Reflections on Natural History) by Stephen Jay Gould Essay: Bathybius y Eozoon, Quote Page 299, Il Saggiatore, Milano, Italy. (Google Books Preview) ↩︎
  14. 2002, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Seventeenth Edition, Original Editor: John Bartlett, General Editor: Justin Kaplan, Entry: Vilfredo Pareto, Quote Page 594, Column 1, Published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  15. 2012, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Eighteenth Edition, Original Editor: John Bartlett, General Editor: Geoffrey O’Brien, (There is no entry for Vilfredo Pareto is this book), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎