Selected mistakes quotes

1. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

2. Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

3. One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

4. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

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

6. Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

7. Of the nine red cards this season we probably deserved half of them.

8. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

9. Watch out! It's quite possible that some of my best mistakes haven't yet been made.

10. It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

11. At great expense, we have built a vast system of inter-connecting stupidities.

12. I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I'm going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

13. Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

14. How many times will Davey put a disc into his CD player before realizing it's a DVD?

15. At least half of my life's many mistakes can be safely put down to impetuosity: the other half derive from inertia.

16. If it is a mistake of the head and not the heart don't worry about it, that's the way we learn.

17. The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

18. Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

19. Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.

20. A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

21. Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

22. I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.

23. Now, there's no use crying over spoiled milk.

24. Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.

25. The public seldom forgive twice.

26. If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.

27. The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

28. I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.

29. In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

30. I learn from my mistakes. It's a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there's no gain.

31. It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

32. As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

33. The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

34. In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

35. The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.

36. Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.

37. If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

38. I went camping and borrowed a circus tent by mistake. I didn't notice until I got it set up. People complained because they couldn't see the lake.

39. The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

40. There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.

41. [as a stoned NASA scientist] Okay, okay check this out. The Mars lander...I did the calculations in feet...but I programmed it in meters! Oops! So instead of landing, fucker buried! 180 million dollar, whoopsie! Two years, SPLAT! Oh, oh, this is great, this is, shh, shh...the Hubble telescope...I forgot to put in the lens! *covers one eye* 'Read the top line for me?' 'Uh, Alpha Centauri, uh...Sirius, the rest is just a black hole!'

42. Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

43. We should face reality and our past mistakes in an honest, adult way. Boasting of glory does not make glory, and singing in the dark does not dispel fear.

44. Now this is... talk about not being able to pronounce things, I'm in real trouble with this next one, because the name of the band... well it's spelt K-U-K-L. Now how would you pronounce that? I mean given that it's some kind of nordic language that you're not entirely familiar with. Well I checked around a bit, with people who know the band and they said, well, it's pronounced 'Curcle'. So I said 'Curcle', I mean that seems, you know, feasible... daft, but feasible... so K-U-K-L, Curcle, so I went ahead and that's what I said when I did a radio programme featuring this domestically, and a member of the band phoned up and said 'No, it's not Curcle at all, it's...' he didn't say it like this at all but he said '... it's pronounced Krchk'. And I said, well how can it be pronounced Krchk, I said, cause there's no 'R' in it... there's an 'L'... and the 'L' is at the end, you know, all that kind of thing. Anyway, he says it's Krchk, so this is Krchk, and frankly the title of the piece I have no intention at all of trying to pronounce, it's spelt S-O-N-G-U-L-L and it's almost certainly pronounced 'Lester'. (plays the record) That's Kukl, pronounced Krchk and this is John Peel's Music, pronounced 'Excuse me, but isn't that my ladder?'

45. There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

46. Error is the price we pay for progress.

47. Great services are not cancelled by one act or by one single error.

48. 'By the Lion's Mane, a strange device,' said King Peter, 'to set a lantern here where the trees cluster so thick about it and so high above it that if it were lit it should give light to no man!' (ch. 17)

49. You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

50. None but a fool is always right.

51. Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

52. 'I've wiped the file? .... I've wiped all the files? .... I've wiped the INTERNET? I don't even have a modem!'

53. Where the fuck was I? What was I talking about? (Leans ear toward audience) Breasts, yes I know generally, but how far down the breast line was I? Oh yes oh yes, exploding in aeroplanes. True, true, true. Except for the lies.

54. It's no use crying over spilt evils. It's better to mop them up laughing.

55. Il n'y a point de gens qui aient plus souvent tort que ceux qui ne peuvent souffrir d'en avoir.

56. I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience, that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St.Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as 'The Tail Of Two Cities.' I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore.

57. One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.

58. She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

59. I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

60. Bob: Welcome to the Lucky Strike Program. In just a few minutes, you'll see our star, Gypsy Rose Benny.

61. Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

62. Learn from your mistakes and build on your successes.

63. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

64. There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.

65. He made a mistake, you know? And if he hadn't done this particular thing that night, it wouldn't have been... but he was... it happened. (1995)

66. If you haven't made some mistakes by 28, it's abnormal.

67. I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

68. Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

69. Our greatest stupidities may be very wise. (p. 39e)

70. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

71. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

72. It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

73. I've done a lot worse than jump off piers, son. Like throw a television out the window.

74. Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

75. The road to wisdom? - Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less.

76. Wisdom is the booby prize given when you've been unwise.

77. I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine.

78. You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

79. It is impossible for a man to be respectable enough to make a mistake respectable.

80. When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.

81. One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.

82. My life has been one long series of mistakes.

83. A dog returning to his vomit

84. Invitat culpam qui peccatum praeterit