quotations about mistakes
Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled; he must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to anything like perfection; and these experiments imply a succession of mistakes.
JANE TAYLOR
The Contributions of Q. Q.
You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.
GENEEN ROTH
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
He that finds out he's changed his lot for worse,
Let him betimes the untoward choice reverse:
For still, when all is said, the rule stands fast,
That each man's shoe be made on his own last.
HORACE
Epistles
To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I've made.
ALICE BAG
Violence Girl
The term of man's life is half wasted, before he has done with his mistakes, and begins to profit by his lessons.
JANE TAYLOR
The Contributions of Q. Q.
When you make a mistake, don't make a second one -- keeping it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast table.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Mistakes occur through haste, never through doing a thing leisurely.
CHINESE PROVERB
The cautious seldom err.
CONFUCIUS
Analects
No error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory; but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.
GIAN-CARLO ROTA
Indiscrete Thoughts
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Illustrated London News, April 19, 1924
I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Under the Deodars
They say we learn from mistakes,
that's why they mistake me.
LIL WAYNE
"Blunt Blowin", Tha Carter IV
Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this; because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults, or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Joseph Reed, January 14, 1776
Mistake, error, is the discipline through which we advance.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
Address on the Present Age
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
CHARLES DARWIN
letter to A. Stephen Wilson, March 5, 1879