177 Mistakes Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The public seldom forgive twice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human.

I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science-and nothing can be quite so informative and instructive as a juicy mistake.

I was going to tape some records onto a cassette, but I got the wires backwards. I erased all of the records. When I returned them to my friend, he said, 'Hey, these records are all blank.'

The Ignorance the people live in leads them to commit mistakes against their own happiness

...There will be a 'Oops 100.' They'll be plenty more oopses. I'm not perfect. I'm human.

It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style

I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.

To err is natural; to rectify error is glory.

Set the cart before the horse.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.

Watching the painter painting And all the time, the light is changing And he keeps painting That bit there, it was an accident But he's so pleased It's the best mistake, he could make And it's my favourite piece. It's just great.

We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.

I fear I'll do some damage One fine day But I would not be convicted By a jury of my peers Still crazy Still crazy Still crazy after all these years.

I've learned from my mistakes and I'm sure I can repeat them exactly.

'Did you sleep good?' 'No, I made a couple of mistakes.'

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. ~ Ch.1

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves? -Ender's Shadow

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

I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity. Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all. Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, 'defiles' - they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians.

All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.

Totalitarian tyranny is not based on the virtues of the totalitarians. It is based on the mistakes of the liberals.

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

We've all done things we shouldn't, it's just I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I'm not a saint. ... I wasted time doing self-destructive things but it didn't work. I found out you can only dance on so many tabletops. I got that all out of my system and now I'm healthy and I'm grounded.

I only fuck up that bad about once every two months ... which is a pretty high fuck-up ratio for a professional musician, when you think about it.

Learning: 'A person who makes few mistakes makes little progress.'

Hell, that's why they make erasers.

Make the suspension adjustable and they will adjust it wrong -- look what they can do to a Weber carburetor in just a few moments of stupidity with a screwdriver.

[He's] the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.

The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was all either wise or unavoidable. We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

President Bush has shown that he is incapable of recognizing his mistakes. He insists on making reality conform to his beliefs even at the cost of deceiving himself and deliberately deceiving the public. There is something appealing in the strength of his faith, especially in our troubled time. But the cost is too high. By putting our faith in a President who cannot admit his mistakes we commit ourselves to the wrong policies.

It's not a very big thing to say, 'I made a mistake' on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can't. She's advised by so many smart advisers who are covering every base. I think that America was better served when the candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.

Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I'm aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer nods.

Why not do what you really think, even if it's a mistake?

There are three things I'll never do again - eat Play-Doh, run with scissors and keep my ice-cube collection in a shoebox.

Happy is he that grows wise by other men's harms.

(After playing 'Higher State Of Consciousness' by Josh Wink for the second time:) I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that sounded better when I played it the other night, at the wrong speed.

There are uncertain truths - even true statements that we may take to be false - but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.

Mistakes that are perceived as mistakes are often not mistakes at all.

Those who do not know their history are doomed to keep stepping in it.

Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.

I'm proud to say I have never been wrong about anything.

In a successful attempt to thwart a seduction I had ended up with two whores and a whore house. And I was just eighteen.

'The hardest freedom to maintain is the freedom of making mistakes.'

Be kind to each other in your homes. Be kind to those who surround you. I prefer that you make mistakes in kindness rather than that you work miracles in unkindness. Often just for one word, one look, one quick action, and darkness fills the heart of the one we love.

People say, I miss my prediction, cause the fight went ten rounds. First I said Jones in four, then I said Jones in six. Six & four is what???.

Brilliant young people who were nevertheless silly with love-or youth, as if it made a difference.

We don't mean to mess things up, but mess them up we do. And then it's 'Oh, I'm sorry.' Here's a smiling photograph of love when it was new. At a birthday party. Make a wish and close your eyes; surprise, surprise, surprise.

The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make--for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre. -- The Practice of Management (1954)

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.

I'll never forget the time I tried Cocaine. Horrible experience. Of course, I was on Acid at the time... (Monologue from his Saturday Night Live appearance)

I bought a self-learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record had a skip. The next day I could only stutter in Spanish.

I put my air conditioner in backwards. It got cold outside. The weatherman on TV was confused. 'It was supposed to be hot today.'

This proves that you're not infallible... Well, nobody is. Whoever thinks they're infallible is gonna really fall into a big hole some day. I've fallen into holes and I will watch out for them now, and I don't fall in as deep as I used to. But, I mean, I've been in some big holes - but I climbed out.

I bought her this handkerchief... and I didn't even know her size.

Sex is only dirty if it's done right.

Sometimes, chaos is a good thing. Some guitar players are afraid of making mistakes, hitting the wrong notes or their equipment failing or different factors that are going to make them look unprofessional. For me, that's what makes the show interesting. ...When I was a kid and would go see a rock show and something f--ed up would happen, there was a riot or all the gear got broken, that's more exciting than going up and having the most perfectly executed show go off without a hitch ... We put a show on that people are going to talk about and maybe change people's views on what rock 'n' roll has to be.

It's best that pilots learn in other people's planes.

It's no use firing an employee who made an involuntary mistake is his action was triggered by an eagerness to succeed.