Mistake Quotes

Even a mistake is better than nothing.

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who has never achieved much.

A mistake is simply another way of doing things.

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?

Never mistake legibility for communication.

It's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are our teachers — they help us to learn.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing—the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

I'm most proud of the blessings that God has bestowed upon me, in my life. He's given me the vision to truly see that you can fall down, but you can still get back up. Hopefully I'll learn from my mistakes and have the opportunity to strengthen and improve the next thing I do.

No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.

Eliminate the cause of a mistake. Don't just clean it up.

I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

Egotism - usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.

I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good make you who you are. Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake.

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.

I will be the first to admit I am not perfect and I make mistakes.

Many people fail not so much because of their mistakes; they fail because they are afraid to try.

Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.

Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Lean from others' mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself.

The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake - you can't learn anything from being perfect.

From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come.

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

To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on.

I think we all mistake certain things for happiness. I think we mistake comfort for happiness and we mistake pleasure for happiness, and entertainment for happiness, when really these are just things we use as proxies for our happiness. We use them to cheer us up or try and achieve brief happiness, when really happiness is something much more profound and long lasting and exists within us.

I tell you these stories because these things happen to everyone. It's not about being starched or polished or cute or polite. It's about having ears that stick out, about breaking yet another glass. It's about seeing something for the first time and making a million mistakes and not ever getting completely discouraged.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes—in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer—you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'.

Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel.

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may decieve you - you decide what's good. You decide alone, but no one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Fight for their mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good.

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

My main mistake was to have made an ancient people advance by forced marches toward independence, health, culture, affluence, comfort.

I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

The main question to a novel is — did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not — story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

If you have to make mistakes, make them good and big, don't be middling if you can help it.

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

My life is full of mistakes. They're like pebbles that make a good road.

It's especially hard to admit that you made a mistake to your parents, because, of course, you know so much more than they do.

Lilith: Oh, but your heart grows cold. A north wind blows and carries down the distant... Rose? The Doctor: Oooh, big mistake! Because that name keeps me fighting!

I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

In life and business, there are two cardinal sins. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all.

Learning to stop sweating the small stuff involves deciding what things to engage in and what things to ignore. From a certain perspective, life can be described as a series of mistakes, one right after another with a little space in between.

as imperfect human beings, any of us, all of us, are subject at some time or another to make mistakes!

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

The most ominous of fallacies - the belief that things can be kept static by inaction

Don't mistake politeness for lack of strength.

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.

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

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.

I think the human race made a big mistake at the beginning of the industrial revolution, we leaped for the mechanical things, people need the use of their hands to feel creative.

If you can channel the best part of you that is bigger than yourself, where it's not about your ego and not about getting ahead, then you can have fun and you aren't jealous of others. You see other people's talent as another branch of your own. You can keep it rooted in joy. Life is long and there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. The point of it all is to learn.

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.

I try to extract something positive from every situation, even if it's just learning not to make the same mistake twice.

That's an animal fable about humility. If you survive your mistake, you must learn from it. Accept that you're fragile, vulnerable, and sometimes stupid. Realize that you're not immortal and you've got to take care of yourself. And then laugh it off and fly away.

Don't ever for a minute make the mistake of looking down your nose at westerns. They're art - the good ones, I mean. They deal in life and sudden death and primitive struggle, and with the basic emotions - love, hate, and anger - thrown in. We'll have westerns films as long as the cameras keep turning. The fascination that the Old West has will never die. And as long as people want to pay money to see me act, I'll keep on making westerns until the day I die.

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.

We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.

A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is little else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, lust, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life and Life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men sick, sinful, or mortal.

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.

The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations, and the effect of decisiveness itself makes things go and creates confidence.

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

Always make new mistakes.

Aren't you going to tell me I'm not so bad? she asked. Mmm-no. I was thinking how every man loves a hot girl with a history of making mistakes. Because it's always possible she'll make one with you.

Remember there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible

If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we've got the least excuse for it.

The whole Renaissance tradition is antipethic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Cezanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this... ...Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away form the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.

You look like gold. I've been fooled before, but now I know I've made the mistake in the past. But now I, now I know the difference from gold and brass.

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but one should always make new ones. Repeating mistakes is a hallmark of dim consciousness.

There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.

They told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program as an advance way of keeping the club going. I'll never make the mistake of being seventy again.

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.

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

Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.

Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren and played all those sexy broads, people made the mistake of thinking I was like that off the screen. They couldn't have been more wrong.

There might be false starts and do-overs.You are entitled to experiment before you find your calling.

There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one mind to know another, and how it is possible to know the contents of our own minds without resort to observation or evidence. It is a mistake, I shall urge, to suppose that these questions can be collapsed into two, or taken into isolation.

People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They're wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster.

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

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

I have never forgiven myself…that I might have made a mistake.

To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power.

Some part of a mistake is always correct

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

Take risks. Ask big questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; if you don't make mistakes, you're not reaching far enough.

The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!

A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.

The worst mistake a boss can make is not to say 'Well done'.

People do make mistakes and I think they should be punished. But they should be forgiven and given the opportunity for a second chance. We are human beings.

Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak, and hasn't learned from his past mistakes. It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews.

People mistake their limitations for high standards.

Before I make a mistake, I don't make that mistake.

I worry because there is a basic asymmetry, an imbalance, between the two parties. For the Palestinians, it is about status and sovereignty, which could always be adjusted, while for Israel it is about security and trust. And security is something you can't adjust. If you make a mistake on the scrutiny issue, there is no going back.

Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes.

A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

The Administration has made critical mistakes and errors in judgment leading up to the war in Iraq. The President refuses to acknowledge these mistakes, and thus, no corrective action has been taken to prevent these problems from happening again.

He that never changes his opinion never corrects mistakes and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Memories assailed him of how gently she had spoken, touched, and moved; of how she'd loved him fiercely despite his mistakes and obsessions and weaknesses. And the conviction descended on him that love like theirs couldn't possibly suffer any change.

If people are coming to work excited. . . if they're making mistakes freely and fearlessly. . . if they're having fun. . . if they're concentrating on doing things rather than preparing reports and going to meetings-then somewhere you have leaders.

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of living high.

How would you like a job where when you made a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?

Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice.

Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?... True effectiveness requires balance.

I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.

Sometimes things work out on the golf course and sometimes they don't. Life will go on. You try to understand what happens, but maybe today I don't want to know. I just screwed up so maybe I should just put it behind me.

All nations are more tolerant of their own mistakes and weaknesses than of the mistakes and weaknesses of others.

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.

I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.

Young men make great mistakes in life; for one thing, they idealize love too much.

Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.

It's discouraging to make a mistake, but it's humiliating when you find out you're so unimportant that nobody noticed it.

A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.

People really need to take time and read a book, you know, that's my advice. You could read 'A New Slant on Life,' you could read 'Dianetics.' And I think if you really read it, you'll understand it, but unless you do, you'll speculate. And I think that's a mistake to do that.

The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.

No writer of a portion of the Bible was perfect. It was the direct and miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit that what they wrote is without mistake.

The danger, though - and there have been signs of this recently - is that Europe begins to demonstrate a return to more nationalist sentiment. To my mind, that would be a great mistake.

The most cowardly thing in the world is blaming mistakes upon the umpires. Too many managers strut around on the field trying to manage the umpires instead of their teams.

But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren't there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they're there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don't have quite the same point of view.

Vietnam was worse than immoral - it was a mistake.

Three-fourths of the mistakes a man makes are made because he does not really know what he thinks he knows.

We have to keep trying things we're not sure we can pull off. If we just do the things we know we can do ... you don't grow as much. You gotta take those chances on making those big mistakes.

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about.

Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn't making mistakes that's critical; it's correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.

In show business, if you make a mistake, you can do it over again.

I make my share of mistakes, but one I never make is to underestimate the power of things. People imbued from childhood with the myth of the primacy of feeling seldom like to admit they really want things as much as they might want love, but my career has convinced me that plenty of them do. And some want things a lot worse than they want love.

Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes.

Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions.

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.

Life is not life unless you make mistakes

You can't pay attention to your mistakes. I made a mistake today, I made a mistake yesterday. I think it's... very important to ignore the negative.

Yes I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. Mistake overturned so I call it a lesson learned. My soul has returned so I call it a lesson learned...another lesson learned

I am not the kind of woman who excuses her mistakes while reminding us of what used to be.

Too many critics mistake the deliberations of the Congress for its decisions.

Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.

Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can't solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work. Condition your people to avoid compromise.

Everything that happened to me happened by mistake. I don't believe in fate. It's luck, timing and accident.

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

The mistakes that I made I made because I drank too much. I don't think that's going to happen any more. Am I going to make mistakes as a parent? Sadly, every day. I'm looking around for the perfect parent and I haven't seen one yet.

I like radio better than television because if you make a mistake on radio, they don't know. You can make up anything on the radio.

Develop a built-in bullshit detector.

Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography - that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs.

To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.

I think that a lot of people are in love with stress. It's the dirty little secret of Western civilization. People often mistake stress for fuel.... to me, stress is just another bad drug that I don't want to do.

It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.

We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with.

If I made a mistake in singing a song or in the script, I could have some fun with it, then retain any of the fun that sounded amusing.

There's nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

Humility leads to strength and not to weakness. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes and to make amends for them.

I am deeply worried because we are seeing an unleashing of violence by 2,000 to 3,000 thugs who come to smash and loot. My objective is to avoid mistakes by the police, so that people can protest in safety.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.

The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your successes-any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your mistakes.

We are having to live with paying the price for what happened before.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man... , But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.

The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.

I dont listen to my own records a lot. Once in a while - to check out my mistakes. Because you can always see a spot or two in the record where you could have done better. So you more or less study this way.

I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again.

What this anger hides is grief ... the reality that his wife didn't value their marriage as much as he did. He realizes it was a mistake.

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

Do not show your wounded finger for everything will knock up against it.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

Golf is not a game of great shots. It's a game of most accurate misses. The people who win make the smallest mistakes.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered

Our motto is whenever you make a mistake, do it twice.