quotations about mistakes
He is a thorough accountant who can cast up correctly the sum of his own errors.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
No man's error becomes his own law, nor obliges him to persist in it.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
Mistakes are like accidents: they are bound to happen, but if we take precautions we have a fairly good chance of minimizing their number and their impact. If we do that, there is no reason to worry: we have enough protection.
GABOR FORRAI
Reference, Truth and Conceptual Schemes: A Defense of Internal Realism
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
Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.
ANONYMOUS
Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
Mistakes are there to teach you how to do things right. Contained in every mistake is a lesson. By doing it wrong this is often how you learn to do it right.
DARIN PENZERA
Heroic Egoism
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
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
Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.
JEAN ROSTAND
"A Biologist's Thoughts", The Substance of Man
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"
Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all -- they are attempting nothing new.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
One Minute Nonsense
All men may err; but he that keepeth not his folly, but repenteth, doeth well; but stubbornness cometh to great trouble.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
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
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1953
Though you may be last to discover your follies, be always first to correct them.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections