quotations about mistakes
To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
Our failures or mistakes give us important feedback on what we need to change or concentrate on in the future.
DANA LIGHTMAN
Power Optimism
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Cambridge Thirty Years Ago
There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Illustrated London News, April 25, 1931
The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is with pleasure I receive reproof, when reproof is due, because no person can be readier to accuse me, than I am to acknowledge an error, when I am guilty of one; nor more desirous of atoning for a crime, when I am sensible of having committed it.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Governor Dinwiddie, August 27, 1757
I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Under the Deodars
An error is not a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
PEARL S. BUCK
What America Means to Me
Behold the truth
Whenever heart may ache
There is a glory
In a great mistake.
NATHALIA CRANE
"Imperfection", Swear By the Night and Other Poems
The man who on discovering his errors acknowledges and corrects them, is scarcely less entitled to our esteem than if he had not erred.
JOHN PYE SMITH
Vindiciæ Academicæ
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
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
GENE FOWLER
Skyline
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
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
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.
BRANDON MULL
Fablehaven
I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to the wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day of the wrong week
I used the wrong method with the wrong technique
Wrong
DEPECHE MODE
"Wrong"
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.