quotations about mistakes
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 never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Under the Deodars
Do you know what it is like,
to lie in bed awake;
with thoughts to haunt
you every night,
of all your past mistakes.
LANG LEAV
Love & Misadventure
A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
KURT VONNEGUT
Player Piano
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
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
Lack of recent information is responsible for more mistakes of judgment than erroneous reasoning.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
attributed, "The Living Law", Harper's Weekly, February 26, 1916
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.
What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I've made.
ALICE BAG
Violence Girl
Mistakes occur through haste, never through doing a thing leisurely.
CHINESE PROVERB
Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
I don't make mistakes. I make predictions which immediately turn out to be wrong.
TONY BENN
Arguments for Socialism
What an unchallenging life it would be if we always got things right on the first go.
RANSOM RIGGS
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
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
The cautious seldom err.
CONFUCIUS
Analects
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
There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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