
“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired…”
Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers
“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired…”
Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers
“He who never makes a mistake, never makes anything.”
Variant: He who never makes a mistake never makes anything. It's part of learning the job.
Source: Revenge of the Witch
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting
“If one doesn't know his mistakes, he won't want to correct them.”
Nam qui peccare se nescit, corrigi non vult.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXVIII: On travel as a cure for discontent, Line 9
Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)
Misattributed
Variant: A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)
Context: It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
The Great Infidels (1881)
Context: All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.
Tomas Bata (1928), translated and cited in: Tribus, Myron. "Lessons from Tomas Bata for the Modern Day Manager." Tvůrčí odkaz Tomáše Bati a současné podnikatelské metody (2001).
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn