Errors quotes
1.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside errors — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Reality show? You can't find anything better than boxing because of the trials and errors, the ups and downs, the struggle when you get knocked down to get back up. Use it symbolically and interchangeably for life."
"[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life."
"Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work."
"there's no defense except all the errors made"
"There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths."
"None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error."
"Something of the hermit's temper is an essential element in many forms of excellence, since it enables men to resist the lure of popularity, to pursue important work in spite of general indifference or hostility, and arrive at opinions which are opposed to prevalent errors."
"All of your errors have not built a wall against your success. They have paved your way to it."
"There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood."
"L'homme n'est qu'un sujet plein d'erreur, naturelle et ineffa c° able sans la gra" ce. Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace."
"Whether surrounded with error or truth, the web woven around them in childhood's days lasts, and seldom wears threadbare...The traditions of my earliest recollection are so forcible upon me that it seems impossible for me to get rid of them. And so it is with others; hence the necessity of correct training in childhood."
"We do not wish incorrect and unsound doctrines to be handed down to posterity under the sanction of great names, to be received and valued by future generations as authentic and reliable, ... Errors in history and doctrine, if left uncorrected by us who are conversant with the events, and who are in a position to judge of the truth or falsity of the doctrines, would go to our children as though we had sanctioned and endorsed them."
"There really is "no effort without error and shortcoming" and there really is no triumph without vulnerability."
"Responding to truth will keep you safe. Reacting to error will only create another error."
"I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards."
"Error is the price we pay for progress."
"Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities."
"Error itself may be happy chance."
"Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories."
"There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment."
