quotations about mistakes
I could take the greatest deal-makers of all time and they've always had something that didn't quite work out. You never want to put yourself in the position where something not working out is bigger than what you are and therefore takes you down. It's got to be in smaller chunks. In all cases, I want to learn something from things that didn't quite work out and learn, so that it doesn't happen again or so that in the future, you make great decisions. You don't want to make the same mistake twice and you have to learn that early on in your life.
DONALD TRUMP
Forbes, October 3, 2011
A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
KURT VONNEGUT
Player Piano
At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.
ANGIE THOMAS
The Hate U Give
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.
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
Mistakes occur through haste, never through doing a thing leisurely.
CHINESE PROVERB
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 don't make mistakes. I make predictions which immediately turn out to be wrong.
TONY BENN
Arguments for Socialism
What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I've made.
ALICE BAG
Violence Girl
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
The cautious seldom err.
CONFUCIUS
Analects
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