“The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer, or even of making mistakes.”

Aleph (2011)
Context: Seek out people who aren’t afraid of making mistakes and who, therefore, do make mistakes. Because of that, their work often isn’t recognized, but they are precisely the kind of people who change the world and, after many mistakes, do something that will transform their own community completely”.

L’extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n’en donner guere à ceux qui nous écoutent.
Translation by E.H. Blackmore et. al., in Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, de La Rochefoucauld, Oxford University Press (2008) : ISBN 019162313X
Maxim 314
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Akio Morita, cited in: Nick Lyons (1976) The Sony vision. p. 101.

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 46

As quoted in American Chronicle (1945) by Ray Stannard Baker, quoted on unnumbered page opposite p. 1
1920s and later

Statement in his Diary http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/1942.htm on the WWII Internment of Japanese Americans (10 February 1942) &lt;!-- , as quoted in The Colonel : The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950 (1990) by Godfrey Hodgson, p. 259 --&gt; <br class="br">Context: The second generation Japanese can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese. The latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system.