“You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday”
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.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jonathan Swift141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller
Posthumous attributions
“Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow.”
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology
The Creation Of Human Ability (1954).
“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer
Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge
Massachusetts v. United States, 333 U.S. 611, 639-40 (1948) (dissenting)
Judicial opinions
“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.”
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
101 Best Ways to Get Ahead: Solid Gold Advice from 101 of the World's Most Successful People (2004) by Michael E. Angier and Sarah Pond, p. 30
1990s