quotations about mistakes
Our mistakes are especially interesting because they are a major source of wreckage in our relationships, careers, and lives, leading to needless conflict and misunderstanding. Our mistakes lead to ineffective solutions to some of society's biggest problems, and they can send nations into needless wars with the worst of consequences. Fortunately for improvement's sake, the mistakes we make trying to understand the minds of others are predictable and therefore correctable.
NICHOLAS EPLEY
Mindwise
Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken -- errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.
LOUIS ARAGON
Paris Peasant
They say we learn from mistakes,
that's why they mistake me.
LIL WAYNE
"Blunt Blowin", Tha Carter IV
We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience. To enveigh against things that are past and irremediable, is unpleasing; but to steer clear of the shelves and rocks we have struck upon, is the part of wisdom, equally as incumbent on political as other men, who have their own little bark, or that of others, to navigate through the intricate paths of life, or the trackless ocean, to the haven of security and rest.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Armstrong, March 26, 1781
To rectify past blunders is impossible, but we might profit by the experience of them.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Fielding Lewis, July 6, 1780
I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.
JOE ABERCROMBIE
Last Argument of Kings
Mistakes are the knots, the tangles, the broken threads, the dropped stitches in the web of our living. They are the misdeals in judgment, our unwise investments in morals, the profit and loss account of wisdom.
WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN
The Crown of Individuality
The wise man corrects his own errors by observing those of others.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
My Early Life: A Roving Commission
Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
Man's attitude towards his mistakes is various and peculiar; some do not see them; some will not see them; some see without changing; some see and deplore, but keep on; some make the same mistakes over and over again, in principle not in form; some blame others for their own mistakes; some condemn others for mistakes seemingly unconscious that they themselves are committing similar ones; some excuse their mistakes by saying that others do the same thing, as though a disease were less dangerous when it becomes epidemic in a community.
WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN
The Crown of Individuality
Only while sleeping one makes no mistakes. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active--of those who can correct their mistakes and put them right.
INGVAR KAMPRAD
"The Testament of a Furniture Dealer"
Multi-tasking means you can make five mistakes in the time it used to take to make just one!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, May 30, 2000
Unhappy is he who mistakes the branch for the tree, the shadow for the substance.
RABBI SIMON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Makin' mistakes ain't a crime, you know. What's the use of having a reputation if you can't ruin it every now and then?
SIMONE ELKELES
Perfect Chemistry
Mistakes are great. Mistakes are brilliant--get on with making things happen, make mistakes and learn from them, and try more stuff.
RICHARD HAMMOND
Learn Popular Retail Strategies
No man's error becomes his own law, nor obliges him to persist in it.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
With the mistake your life goes in reverse.
Now you can see exactly what you did
Wrong yesterday and wrong the day before
And each mistake leads back to something worse.
JAMES FENTON
"The Mistake", Out of Danger
Mistake, error, is the discipline through which we advance.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
Address on the Present Age