Quotes about mistake
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“If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Learning

“Teresa, Teresa. Have we taught you nothing?" Raffy says in an irritated voice. "It's war. You go in and you hunt him down until he realises that he's made a mistake.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

War

“The quickest way to rectify that mistake (choosing the wrong person) is by learning from that, moving on, and choosing much more wisely in the future.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Way, Learning, Future, Personality

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Books, The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Art, Back To Work

“Good people don’t make fewer mistakes, they’re just better at apologizing.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Here I Am

Source: Here I Am

People

“I hope if there is another world, we will not be judged too harshly for the things we did wrong here—that we will at least be forgiven for the mistakes we made out of love.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: 20th Century Ghosts

Love, World, Hope

“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: American Wife

Learning

“No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

People, Thinking

“If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Undomestic Goddess

Source: The Undomestic Goddess

Life, Learning

“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necesary to a worthwhile achievement".”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“The mistake is in thinking there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Variant: The mistake is thinking that there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.
Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Thinking

“I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Thinking

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

“we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Light, Water, Forgetting

“Mistakes don't have to define us. They're how we learn and grow. They show us who and what we don't want to be. It's why they're mistakes.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Learning

“If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

Learning

“But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?… aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Beauty, Flowers

“One man's mistake is another man's opportunity.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

“We all screw up. Everyone makes mistakes. That’s what she did. It was bad judgment, that’s all. You don’t cut off the people you love for mistakes like that.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Love, People

“You must never feel badly about making mistakes… as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Feeling, Learning

“You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you”

Maxwell Maltz (1889–1975) Plastic surgeon, self-help author

“Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking. Loving might be a mistake. but its worth making”

Reba McEntire (1955) American country music artist and actress

Love, Chance

“We are taught to treat a practice sword with all the respect of a real weapon, so no thoughtless mistakes are made"
"Oh… In Eddis, we learn to keep tack of the weapon we have in our hand.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Learning

“If someone can enjoy marching to music in rank and file, I can feel only contempt for him; he has received his large brain by mistake, a spinal cord would have been enough.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: The World As I See It

Music, Feeling

“Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.”

Elizabeth Peters The Falcon at the Portal

Source: The Falcon at the Portal

Kiss, Reading, Cry

“For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: The Law and Other Essays on Manifestation

Life

“Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.”
More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

God

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Not found in Burke's writings. Appears to be a paraphrase of "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little." sourced to Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845).

Life

“Due to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Anger, Night

“Did you sleep well?"
"No, I made a couple of mistakes.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Sleep

“There are no mistakes”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 1.
Context: Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.

War, Business

“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

“Kid. You just made the last mistake of your life.'
'God,' I said. 'I.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Life, God

“But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: Obviously it won't all run smoothly. But it's important to awknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn fromt them.
Source: Lock and Key

Learning

“When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Imagination

“To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Women, Hostility, Silence

“I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Sense

“Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock.”

Frank Herbert book Chapterhouse: Dune

Source: Chapterhouse: Dune

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

“Do you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.”

Len Deighton (1929) English writer

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers.
The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Question

“Mistake is a mistake only if you make it twice…”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

“There are no mistakes in life,
only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only
opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of selfmastery.
From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Life, Pain, Learning, Teachers

“You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Way, Thinking

“It's better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to timidly avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, action and consequence, then making a choice.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Pleasure

“… for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Finding Noel

Life, Beauty, Learning, Chance

“It began as a mistake.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

“Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.”

Idries Shah book Seeker After Truth

Source: Seeker After Truth

Life, Thinking, Waiting

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 10

“When there is pleasure, there is often abandon, and mistakes are made.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

Pleasure

“I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over and over again or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single besetting sin?”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Life

“Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.”

Julianna Baggott (1969) Author

Source: Girl Talk

Way

“Everyone's life is a mess. We all make mistakes… and not just little slip-ups. Major mistakes that hurt us and other people.”

James Alan Gardner Trapped

Source: Trapped

Life, People, Hurt

“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and
try again in a different way.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Way, Success, Motivational, Success

“The biggest mistake any of us can make is thinking that love is a feeling, an emotion. It's not that at all. It's an action.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Source: Follow the Stars Home

Love, Feeling, Thinking

“Honor your mistake as a hidden intention.”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

“The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Way, Idea

“A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."

"A habit.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books

“We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

People, Time

“You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Variant: You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 4 (Sandhurst).
Source: My Early Life, 1874-1904

World, Hurt

“And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth

Source: Unaccustomed Earth

Forgiveness, Change

“It has been a mistake living my life in the past. One cannot ride a horse backwards and still hold its reins.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Life, Past, Horse

“It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor, always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.

-Hephaestus”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

People, Personality

“If you rely exclusively on the advice of others, you may make terrible mistakes. Your heart knows what you need. Other people have other agendas.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Only Love Is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited

People, Heart

“Anyone can make a mistake…. It's how they learn from it and recover from it that shows their true worth.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Invaders

Learning

“It took me a long time to learn that mistakes aren't good or bad,
they're just mistakes, and you clean them up and go on.”

Kaye Gibbons book A Virtuous Woman

Source: A Virtuous Woman

Learning, Time

“Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

“Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.”

Henning Mankell (1948–2015) Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist

People, Knowledge

“My mistake was in underestimating the emotional force of a song you have already hear a thousand times.”

Augusten Burroughs book You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Source: You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Time

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

11 April 1942.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

History

“How can I make him understand that he did not create me?
He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Feeling, Understanding, Personality

“Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were.
And what we remember.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

People, Help

“Everyone makes mistakes, even if some are worse than others. Accidents happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

“Don’t aim for perfection. Evolution, and life, only happen through mistakes.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Life, Perfection

“Play on, when you're losing the game. Play on, cuz you're going to make mistakes. It's always worth the sacrifice, even when you think you're wrong.”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

Game, Thinking

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”

Iain Banks book The Hydrogen Sonata

Source: The Hydrogen Sonata

“Small mistakes tend to lead to large ones. Ours is a lifetime appoinment, and all you have is your reputation. Once it's gone, it doesn't comeback.”

David Baldacci book The Simple Truth

Source: The Simple Truth

“The only mistake is not to risk making one.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot

“For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Life, Women, Men, Secret

“A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”

Katharine Graham (1917–2001) American publisher

Way

“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 10

Women, Men, People, Way

“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard

Effort

“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#107
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Happiness, Thinking

“There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life”

Kazuo Ishiguro book An Artist of the Floating World

Source: An Artist of the Floating World

Life

“… for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“I want you to have big dreams, big goals. I want you to strive to achieve them. But I don't want to see you beating yourself up every time you make a mistake.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Dreams, Time

“Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Peace, Future

“It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“Life is about coming to terms with the mistakes made. Learning to live with them even when they cut soul deep.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Life, Soul, Learning

“maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark into the world.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Lexie Darnell, Chapter 13, p. 205
Source: 2000s, True Believer (2005)
Context: In her new, more mature incarnation, she embraced the idea that maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark in the world.

Life, Happiness, World, Thinking