32 Apology Quotes

'I never apologized for anything in my life. The only thing I'm sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert's colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie, then I'm sorry for him.'

[at the end of Battle Ostrich] It's nice to know that neither of them chickened out. [awkward pause] Sorry.

Today, on this day that is so extraordinarily important for me, I want to say just a few more personal words than usual. I want to ask for your forgiveness. For the fact that many of the dreams we shared did not come true. And for the fact that what seemed simple to us turned out to be tormentingly difficult. I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt. I turned out to be too naive in something. In some places, problems seemed to be too complicated. We forced our way forward through mistakes, through failures. Many people in this hard time experienced shock.

I am sorry Chris is late this mourning. I could make something up about an appointment or a sickness, but the fact is that we woke up late. Go figure Best, Brother of Toph.

RS: You've called Bush a loser. Reid: And a liar. RS: You've apologized for the loser comment. Reid: But never for the liar, have I?

I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I am not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004, I laid it all out there. And you're right, on a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And you know, I'm embarrassed by it. I'm very sorry I said it. I have said that, you know, it just didn't jive with what I had written about and knew to be the truth. So I know that it is something that some people have said, 'Wait a minute. What happened here?' But I have talked about this and written about it and then, unfortunately, in a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past.

Woman, please let me explain I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain So let me tell you again and again and again... I love you Now and forever.

Actually, I really did copy the entire script of Outlaw Star. I really didn't do any of that, I'm sorry I deluded so many people into thinking I'm not a sham.

You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.

You know, I'm sorry I've been acting weird lately. I just want you to know I'm a kind, loving, completely normal...[has a vision]...oh snap, you little nasty!

Again, I want to apologize today to all of you in the United States military, active duty and retired for this smear. I am not apologizing for myself. I'm apologizing for MediaMatters.org, for Hillary Clinton, for Harry Reid. I'm apologizing for all of these groups who are undertaking efforts to demoralize you. They will not apologize to you for their actions, nor will they apologize to me, but I want to apologize to you on their behalf for this storm having been created out of thin air, out of a total lie. It breaks my heart. But I know you're tough enough to deal with it, much tougher than they are, and you deal with it honestly, up front, and facing bullets - real results. The rest of us are just facing words. You all are the real heroes. Your work is being besmirched and impugned - and several in this country are seeking the defeat of you and your mission. We will not let it happen.

Oh, I'm sorry, sir, if I offended you. I am not anti-Semitic. I love all of my brothers and sisters. Jews, Catholics, Buddhists, even the atheists, I love them all. Like you Americans sing, 'Joy to the world and Jeremiah Bullfrog!

I did not write those letters. This has been a hoax that I've had nothing to do with. I'm sorry it's gone on as long as it has.

I apologize for calling Madam President names in my statement on the radio. My purpose was to encourage every Finnish person to strive forward in life and try to realize their dreams. The statement I gave on the radio could have been phrased otherwise, for example: Everything in life seems possible when someone brought up on the streets can become a Member of Parliament and the ex-president of SETA the President of Finland. The Finnish people have elected you President and I respect their decision. Your politics I will continue to criticize.

(Reading a note he left on the etch-a-sketch) 'I'm sorry I ruined your lives, and crammed eleven cookies into the VCR.'

'This Is Just to Say' from Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it.

I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. I am a libertine, but three families residing in your area have for five years lived off my charity, and I have saved them from the farthest depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I have saved a deserter from death, a deserter abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your whole family looking on, I saved a child-at the risk of my life-who was on the verge of being crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway horse-drawn cart, by snatching the child from beneath it. I am a libertine, but I have never compromised my wife's health. Nor have I been guilty of the other kinds of libertinage so often fatal to children's fortunes: have I ruined them by gambling or by other expenses that might have deprived them of, or even by one day foreshortened, their inheritance? Have I managed my own fortune badly, as long as I have had a say in the matter? In a word, did I in my youth herald a heart capable of the atrocities of which I today stand accused?... How therefore do you presume that, from so innocent a childhood and youth, I have suddenly arrived at the ultimate of premeditated horror? No, you do not believe it. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent.'

Apologies only account for that which they do not alter.

Sorry we hurt your field, mister.

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words.

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.

But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutterball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.