Quotes about mistake (1827 quotes, page 7)

“But that's how life is. You never know how it's going to turn out, and you can't plan for everything. You just have to do your best dealing with things as they come and hope people forgive you when you make a mistake.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

Life , People , Hope , Forgiveness

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love , Feeling , Laughter

“What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.”

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

Attributed in FBI Memo, February 13, 1950 (item 61-4099-25 in Einstein's FBI file—viewable online as p. 72 of "Albert Einstein Part 1 of 14" here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein, as well as p. 72 of the pdf file which can be downloaded here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein/Albert%20Einstein%20Part%201%20of%2014/at_download/file). There is no other information in the FBI's released files as to what source attributed this statement to Einstein, and the files are full of falsehoods, including the accusation that Einstein was secretly pro-communist, when in fact he was openly so Albert Einstein#Vierick Interview (1929)
Disputed
Context: In December, 1947, he made the following statement: "I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life."

Freedom , Country

“This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

28 April 1778, p. 659 http://books.google.com/books?id=yYphdZ0abhUC&q="One+of+the+disadvantages+of+wine+it+makes+a+man+mistake+words+for+thoughts"&pg=PA659#v=onepage
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

Wine

“Inertia iseasy—don't fix what's not broken. Leave well enough alone. So we end up accepting whatbroken, mistaking complaining for action, procrastinating for deliberation.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Thinking , Silence , Indifference

“Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Feeling

“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden & Civil Disobedience

Life , Men , Country

“Don’t waste another day of your life grieving over something that you cannot do anything about. Let God give you a new beginning. Your mistakes are not enough to stop God if you don’t let them.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Life , God

“America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless.”

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

Remark to Ernest Jones as quoted in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud: Years of maturity, 1901-1919‎ (1957) by Ernest Jones, p. 60
Also quoted as, "Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake." in Memories of a Psycho-analyst, ch.9 (1959) by Ernest Jones; and as, "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but I am afraid it is not going to be a success." in Freud: the Man and his Cause, pt. 3, ch. 12, (1980), by Ronald W. Clark; as quoted in Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews, Penguin Books, 2001.
Attributed from posthumous publications

“You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?”

Raymond Carver book Cathedral

Source: Cathedral

Understanding

“Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Pain

“It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.”

Werner Heisenberg book The Part and The Whole

Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gröbsten Fehler kennt, die man in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann, und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden versteht.
Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969); as translated in Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)

“Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can't fix anything. And your life might turn out full of regrets.”

Jenny Colgan (1972) British writer

Source: The Little Shop of Happy Ever After

Life

“It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's successes.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Leadership Gold: Lessons I've Learned from a Lifetime of Leading

Learning , Success , Personality

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Fear

“Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it's contagious.”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

Fear

“A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Judging Eye

TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES
Source: The Judging Eye (2009)

Stupidity , Suffering

“It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

“But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.”

Nicholson Baker book The Anthologist

Source: The Anthologist

Life , Death , Thinking

“Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Men , Sincerity

“We all make mistakes but one has to move on.”

Jeffrey Archer (1940) English author and former politician

“Truth wasn't something you went out and found. It was wide and vast and deep and unending, and all you could hope to see was a tiny part of it. And to see that part and to mistake it for the whole was to make of Truth a lie.”

Margaret Weis book Dragon Wing

Source: Dragon Wing

Truth , Lie , Hope , Parting

“Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

On the game of Golf in an interview with Nick Harper http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1093850,00.html in The Guardian (28 November 2003).

Game , Parting

“True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers, and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Life , Lovers , Passion

“We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.
The Walk - Epilogue Page 288”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

Fate , Loss

“Oh, Gods."
His eyes shone with want and predatory satisfaction. "The name's William. It's a common mistake.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Bayou Moon

God

“But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“A mistake isn’t a mistake unless it can’t be put right.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Undomestic Goddess

Source: The Undomestic Goddess

“All around the dining hall, you can feel the rejuvenating effect that a good meal can bring on. The way it can make people kinder, funnier, more optimistic, and remind them it's not a mistake to go on living. It's better than any medicine.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People , Way , Feeling

“An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Feeling

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Life , Error , Feeling , Failure

“Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Pain , Learning

“A serious mistake in a nightie,
A grave disappointment all round
Is all that you'll get from th'Almighty,
Is all that you'll get underground.
Oh he said: "If you lay off the crumpet
I'll see you alright in the end.
Just hang on until the last trumpet.
Have faith in me, chum – I'm your friend."”

James Fenton (1949) poet

"God, a Poem", line 5, from Children in Exile (1983)

Faith , Disappointment

“…he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes were made, regrets form, and all the was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 3
2000s, The Choice (2007)

People , Law , Nature , Change

“The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual, and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Howard Gardner (in Siegel & Shaughnessy, 1994), quoted in: Cara F. Shores (2011), The Best of Corwin: Response to Intervention, p. 51

Children , Way , Feeling , Past

“Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

(Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Nov 2005).
Attributed

“Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. XIV

Love , Women , Men , Children

“don't spread the discontent
don't spread the lies
don't make the same mistakes
with your own life”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Break Your Heart

Life

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money , Way , Feeling , Drink

“Listen boy
Don't want to see you let a good thing
Slip away.
You know I don't like watching
Anybody make the same mistakes
I made.
She's a real nice girl
And she's always there for you.
But a nice girl wouldn't tell you what you should do.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Tell Her About It.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

Girl , Boy

“Yours is the guilt of all, who, judging wrong,
Mistake tuned nonsense for the poet's song!
Provoking dulness!—what a soul has he
Who fancies rhyme, and measure, poetry!—
He thinks, profanely, that this generous art
Stops at the ear—with power to shake the heart.”

Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer

Advice to the Poets (1731), p. 32

Art , Soul , Thinking , Heart

“Because of the counseling which ministers do, there are strenuous efforts to make inroads into the ministry. Be alert to the drive by certain analytical psychiatrists to have ministers accept their amoral philosophy. They opine those feelings of guilt and a sense of right and wrong cause mental illnesses. This entire concept is being discredited. There is far more mental health in the Judaic-Christian concept of resisting temptation and overcoming mistakes than ever emanated from the Freudian couch.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Health , Feeling , Sense , Effort

“She thought that most women make a great mistake in allowing dress to be the master instead of the servant of their good looks; many women were, she considered, entirely crushed and made insignificant by the beauty of their clothes.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Tenterhooks (1912), Chapter x.

Women , Beauty , Clothes

“If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 22
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Bird , Time

“I begin a painting with a series of mistakes. The painting comes out of the correction of mistakes by feeling. I begin with shapes and colors which are not related internally nor to the external world; I work without images. Ultimate unifications come about through modulations of the surface by innumerable trials and efforts. The final picture is the process arrested at the moment when what I was looking for flashes into view.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Cconversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 94
after 1970

World , Color , Feeling , Effort

“With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Page 141
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

War

“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

Women , Men , Youth , Justice

“You have to learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Variations of this quote have been attributed to a number of people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Samuel Levenson, and Lao Tzu; there is no solid support for any such attribution.
Misattributed

Learning

“I was… informed, that Baptista Porta, and one or two more, had written somewhat of that Subject, upon this Information I was willing to see whether I might from any of them find any Directions, that might help mee, if I should afterwards have the like Occasion: But I found very little in any of them for my Purpose. Their Businesse being for the most Part, onely to shew how to write in Cipher, (which was not my Work,) and that Things so written were beyond the Skill of Men to decipher. Onely in Baptista Porta (who alone if I mistake not, hath written any Thing to Purpose about deciphering, and was it seemes famous in his Time for his Abilities that Way;) I found that there were some general Directions, such as were obvious from the Nature of the Thing, and which I had before of myself taken Notice of, and made use of so far as the Nature of an intricate Cipher would permit. But the Truth of it is, there are scarce any of his Rules, which the present Way of Cipher (which is now much improved, beyond what, it seemes, it was in his Days) doth not in a Manner wholly elude…”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

Men , Truth , Way , Nature

“Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.”

Núria Añó (1973) Catalan writer novelist

Presage

Life

“Unfortunately, catastrophes or scandalous disclosures always have to happen before humanity realises that it is only its own mistakes that have led it into misfortune. These are all the more difficult to rectify, because in the main they have been made by the authorities, who will not commit suicide themselves, but in order to save their own skins, they would rather that all Life should perish before they acknowledge their errors.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger, 1933 - Implosion Magazine, No. 2, p. 23. (Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth)
Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth

Life , Error , Suicide

“They[Australians]'ve all kinds of accents, but you can never mistake their voice. It's got the sun in it. Canadians have got grinding ice in theirs, and Virginians have got butter. So have the Irish. In Britain there are no voices, only speaking-tubes.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 2

Sun

“Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

'"The Treasure"
Short Stories

Marriage , Thinking

“I mean you lie—under a mistake.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

Lie

“We make a mistake if we ask ourselves, "Am I good enough?" or "Is it worthwhile to be me?" … Whoever heard of a baby who was inadequate or a child who did not know just exactly how to be a child? How could it not be all right for me to be me? How could it not be just right for you to be you?”

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 106

Baby

“I see myself in the contestants. I’m not the one to tell people, ‘You have to sing this way or that way.’ Talent is something God gave you when you were born. I don’t want to give them technical advice. I love mistakes. When talking about art, the most important thing is to not be perfect, … I want to be a fan, and to be a fan you have to conquer my heart. I don’t want to give marketing advice.”

Laura Pausini (1974) Italian singer

Los Angeles Daily News (October 16, 2014)

Love , God , People , Art

“In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured. Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own message…
Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century, the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve Gould's purpose.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Arthur Jensen, "The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons" http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould-fossils Contemporary Education Review 1:2, 1982

Books , Way , Literature , Appearance

“Two in two minutes for him, and Brazil's World Cup is surely over. This is the first time ever, that Brazil have trailed by four goals in a World Cup match. Four-nil down, twenty-six minutes on the clock. Germany, just too good? This is Brazil, not so much without Neymar. But, without Thiago Silva. Organizing their defense, and this could get a lot worse. Yeah? Unless this team tightens up somehow. Terrible mistake by Fernandinho on that last goal.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Brazil v. Germany (8 July 2014).
2010s, 2014, 2014 FIFA World Cup

World , Time

“Traditionally, the cost of change curve said that if we detect the need for a change early, it costs less to make the change than if we detect the need late. I tackled that curve by saying, let's almost intentionally make mistakes so we can practice correcting them. That practice will help reduce the cost of making changes late.
Our feeling was that the limiting factor on any change was not when it was done, but how much thinking was required.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

Feeling , Thinking , Change , Help

“It's all right to make mistakes, you're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something.”

Dido (1971) English singer-songwriter

Slide
Song lyrics, No Angel (1999)

“Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: "And you'll be glad to know I don't take Jews." Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called "The Jew"”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Yehudi
Source: Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), Issue 372 http://newint.org/features/2004/10/01/yehudi-menuhin/, New Internationalist Magazine

World , Search , Parent , Baby

“Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

The Singer, in The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944), Prologue

Wisdom , Wine

“There are serious mistakes, among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel.… Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion.… It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed.… All those believers who do not follow Islam are losers.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Sermon to a prayer meeting in Niger (30 March 2007), quoted in Reuters UK (30 March 2007) "Gaddafi says only Islam a universal religion" by Salah Sarrar
Speeches

People , Faith , Religion

“It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea ‘democracy’ and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.”

Niall Ferguson book Civilization: The West and the Rest

Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011)

People , Law , Way , Democracy

“To history, until yesterday, Halifax was the arch-appeaser. This, it is now recognised, was a mistake. His rôle, however, was complicated. In these pages he is not the man who stopped the rot, but the embodiment of Conservative wisdom who decided that Hitler must be obstructed because Labour could not otherwise be resisted.”

Maurice Cowling (1926–2005) historian

The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy, 1933-1940 (University of Chicago, 1977), p. 9.

Wisdom , History

“Never mistake the enthusiasm of the minority for the support of the majority.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Harriet Harman, " A Woman's Work https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ogtGDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=neil+kinnock+%22never+mistake+the+enthusiasm+of+the+minority+for+the+support+of+the+majority%22&source=bl&ots=OpoPF2iMuC&sig=uVo7pu8ZjOjHVdXaVvDKeo4Lt94&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwj5veCHxbLSAhXlIcAKHTZIBU0Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=neil%20kinnock%20%22never%20mistake%20the%20enthusiasm%20of%20the%20minority%20for%20the%20support%20of%20the%20majority%22&f=false" (Penguin Books, 2017).

Support

“I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we we're going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U. S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U. S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

At the Washington Institute's Soref Symposium, April 29, 1991 http://web.archive.org/web/20041130090045/http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm
1990s

Way , Thinking , Effort , Time

“The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck; it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)

Change

“The child who defines a lie as being a "naughty word" knows perfectly well that lying consists in not speaking the truth. He is not, therefore, mistaking one thing for another, he is simply identifying them one with another by what seems to us a quaint extension of the word "lie."”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

Truth , Lie , Lying

“The silent annexation is ongoing. The Democratic Progressive Party’s loss of power might be tolerable, but the loss of sovereignty in our time would be an irreversible mistake that would jeopardize future generations.”

Annette Lu (1944) Taiwanese politician

Lu warns on ‘silent annexation’ by China (2013)

Loss , Time , Future

“I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "The 7 Percent Solution", p. 255
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Life , Learning , Reading

“And let's not make any mistake, or gloss over that fact: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. Not only are we the group most at risk of violence, we are most at risk of job discrimination, losing our families; homophobia retains its title as the last socially acceptable form of bigotry.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

People , Family

“Mistakes are the inevitable lot of mankind.”

George Jessel (jurist) (1824–1883) British politician

In re Taylor's Estate (1882) 22 Ch.D. 495, 503.

“Let us not attempt, from the pontifical throne of realism-at-any-cost, to condemn all the art forms which have evolved since the first half of the nineteenth century for we would then fall into the Proudhonian mistake of returning to the past, of putting a straitjacket on the artistic expression of the man who is being born and is in the process of making himself.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Art , Past

“St. Augustine confesses that he himself had been formerly in a similar mistake. 'I was once,' says he, 'a Pelagian in my principles; I thought that faith towards God was not the gift of God, but that we procured it by our own powers, and that then, through the use of it, we obtain the gifts of God; I never supposed that the preventing grace of God was the proper cause of our faith, till my mind was struck in a particular manner by the apostle's argument and testimony: What hast thou that thou hast not received, and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

In this whole business I follow the steps of Augustine.
De causa Dei contra Pelagium

God , Faith , Business

“Oh, I'm not entirely without blame! It was a mistake to have chosen Lon Nol as my right-hand man, my chief of staff, my prime minister, without ever suspecting that he was a traitor in league with the CIA. I thought he was a patriot… Who would have thought the Americans would use him? After all, he was a complete idiot! He never understood a damn thing, always staring at me with those bovine eyes of his, and spending all his time praying.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). pages 112-113.
Interviews

Time

“The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 149.

“Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Here's a really blunt question: would the world be a better or a worse place if a billion Muslims became evangelical Christians tomorrow?
Penn: [long pause] Everything else being equal, I think "yes".
Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Then we agree.
Penn: The argument is made by me that the celebration of faith, the glorification of faith, and faith being defined as The Bible kind of does as belief without proof, is not something that I feel is good to celebrate. To answer the question about evil, I always find that evil takes responsibility away. I want to have—whether it’s me or whether it's a criminal—I want to have full responsibility of my mistakes. And I think when you have this image, whether it's the Disney image of devil Pluto and angel Pluto on your shoulders, pulling you one direction or another, I think that idea of evil is an idea that is anti-responsibility.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

The Glenn Beck Program, April 12, 2013. Edited, including omission of some non-germane remarks. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJk0XFlErTA
2010s

World , Faith , Angels , Feeling

“Psychology is familiar with the “eternal victim,” who exploits this position for disguised aggressions. Also belonging to this category, in a broader sense, are those permanent losers as well as medical and political hypochondriacs who lament that conditions are so terrible that it is a great sacrifice on their part not to kill themselves or emigrate. On the German Left, not least of all under the influence of the sociologized schema of the victim, a certain type of renegade has emerged who feels that it is a dirty trick to have to live in this land without summer and without oppositional forces. Nobody can say that such a viewpoint does not know what it is talking about. Its mistake is that it remains blind to itself. For the accusation becomes bound to misery and magnifies it under the subterfuge of unsuspecting critical observations. With the obstinacy of a Sophist, in aggressive self-reification, many a “critical” consciousness refuses to become healthier than the sick whole.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 58

Feeling , Sense , Summer , Parting

“Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

I lived my life and did what I had to do.”
Aleph (2011)

Life , Hell

“Nietzsche, unlike Jesus Christ, did not mistake his common folk and their ideals; he knew all they wanted was bread and fish, and that they spurned the bread which “cometh from Heaven.””

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 49.

Fish , Christ

“We have been blessed with great presidents, with giants among us. Men of character, integrity and selflessness have led our nation from its very beginning. None were perfect: each surely made mistakes. But in every case, they acted out of the desire to do what was right for America and for freedom.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Men , Freedom , Perfection

“In the year 1660 being importuned by some friends of his, I undertook so to teach Mr. Daniel Whalley of Northampton, who had been Deaf and Dumb from a Child. I began the work in 1661, and in little more than a year's time, I had taught him to pronounce distinctly any words, so as I directed him… and in good measure to understand a Language and express his own mind in writing; And he had in that time read over to me distinctly (the whole or greatest part of) the English Bible; and did pretty well understand (at least) the Historical part of it. In the year 1662 I did the like for Mr. Alexander Popham… I have since that time (upon the same account) taught divers Persons (and some of them very considerable) to speak plain and distinctly, who did before hesitate and stutter very much; and others, to pronounce such words or letters, as before they thought impossible for them to do: by teaching them how to rectify such mistakes in the formation, as by some natural impediment, or acquired Custome, they had been subject to.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

Understanding , Nature , Time , Reading

“We will not be picking up axes and breaking into people's homes. But we will not remain silent either. Moderation in the face of evil is not what our age needs. As Ronald Reagan declared, "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted." We must uncap our pens; we must speak words of truth. We are facing a determined enemy who is striving through all means to destroy the West and snuff out our traditions of free thought, free speech, and freedom of religion. Make no mistake: if we fail, we will be enslaved. We must not let the violent fanatics dictate what we draw, what we say, and what we read. We must rebel against their suffocating rules and thuggish demands at every turn. You can help the fight just by reading this book, which explains the many ways in which Islam has marked for death not just me, but all of Western civilization. We must, in the words of Revolutionary War veteran General John Stark, "Live free or die."”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 1, p. 6

Death , War , People , Truth

“Only while sleeping one makes no mistakes. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active—of those who can correct their mistakes and put them right.”

Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) Entrepreneur

"The Testament of a Furniture Dealer" http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/pdf/reports-downloads/the-testament-of-a-furniture-dealer.pdf (1976).

Sleep

“It would be a mistake to think…that by what we are doing tonight we are giving a vote of confidence or congratulation to homosexuality. Those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of loneliness, guilt and shame. The crucial question, which we are nearly at the end of answering decisively, is, should we add to those disadvantages the full rigour of the criminal law? By its overwhelming decisions, the House has given a fairly clear answer, and I hope that the Bill will now make rapid progress towards the Statute Book. It will be an important and civilising Measure.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/jul/03/clause-8-restrictions-on-prosecution in the House of Commons in favour of the Bill decriminalising homosexuality (3 July 1967).
1960s

Books , Law , Hope , Confidence

“At the time our Prophet and Patriarch were killed, or at least soon afterwards, when the Twelve returned to Nauvoo, their immediate circumstances were not altogether agreeable and pleasant or profitable. But suffice it to say we had a meeting, a Conference, at which President Young was the centre of attraction. On his rising to speak, and as soon as he opened his mouth, I heard the voice of Joseph through him, and it was as familiar to me as the voice of my wife, the voice of my child, or the voice of my father. And not only the voice of Joseph did I distinctly and unmistakably hear, but I saw the very gestures of his person, the very features of his countenance, and if I mistake not, the very size of his person appeared on the stand. And it went through me with the thrill of conviction that Brigham was the man to lead this people. And from that day to the present there has not been a query or a doubt upon my mind with regard to the divinity of his appointment; I know that he was the man selected of God to fill the position he now holds.”

Orson Hyde (1805–1878) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 19:58 (April 5, 1877).

God , People , Appearance , Time

“We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Source: December 2005. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/12/11/nation/12838957&sec=nation

Thinking

“You can walk away from your mistakes
You can turn your back on what you do
Just a little smile is all it takes
And you can have your cake and eat it too.
Loneliness will get to you somehow
But ev'rybody loves you now.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Everybody Loves You Now
Song lyrics, Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

Love , Smile , Loneliness

“Next they passed the Sacred Mountain and the highlands where the Mossynoeci live in the mossynes or wooden houses from which they take their name. These people have their own ideas of what is right and proper. What we do as a rule openly in town or market-place they do at home; and what we do in the privacy of our houses they do out of doors in the open street, and nobody thinks the worst of them. Even the sexual act puts no one to blush in this community. On the contrary, like swine in the fields, they lie down on the ground in promiscuous intercourse and are not at all disconcerted by the presence of others. Then again, their king sits in the loftiest hut of all to dispense justice to his numerous subjects. But if the poor man happens to make a mistake in his findings, they lock him up and give him nothing to eat for the rest of the day.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 1015–1029

People , Lie , Justice , Home

“Having the security of being in a series week in, week out gives you great flexibility; you can experience with yourself, try a different scene different ways. If you make a mistake one week, you can look at it and say, 'Well, I won't do that again,' and you're still on the air next week.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On Rawhides impact on his beginning acting career
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 20. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. ISBN 0806508639.

Way