quotations about mistakes
Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.
BRANDON MULL
Fablehaven
Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom, the assessments we pay on our stock of experience, the raw material of error to be transformed into higher living. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest.
WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN
The Crown of Individuality
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
When people once are in the wrong,
Each line they add is much too long;
Who fastest walks, but walks astray,
Is only furthest from his way.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Alma
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
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
C. G. JUNG
C. G. Jung: Psychological Reflections
However temperate we may be, we shall be sure to make mistakes enough in the world, and bring upon ourselves enough of trouble.
GEORGE MOGRIDGE
Old Humphrey's Address
Other kings let their ministers make their mistakes for them, but Louis insisted on making the important mistakes personally.
WILL CUPPY
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
Mistakes are a form of feedback. Every error tells us what we need to correct. As we correct each mistake, we get nearer to the behavioral sequence that works best.
JOHN BRADSHAW
Healing the Shame that Binds You
I never make the same mistake twice. I make it five or six times, you know, just to be sure.
ANONYMOUS
Even honest men mistake oftener in their own favor than in other peoples.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Everyone thinks I'm a smart arse who can solve any bloody problem. I'm not. I'm just a very old businessman and a very experienced businessman who made every mistake in the book and can recognise one when I see one.
JOHN HARVEY-JONES
The Telegraph, January 10, 2008
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.
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
Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
AL FRANKEN
Oh, the Things I Know
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
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
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