Mistake quotes
6.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside mistake — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at."
"The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain."
"I think it would be a mistake for social media companies to try to, on their own, determine or deign what is a fake news story and what isn't and shut it off, or what's a good news organization or a bad news organization. That's a very, very slippery slope."
"Show me a man who makes no mistakes, and I will show you a man who doesn't do things."
"Neither let mistakes and wrong directions - of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many - discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling - a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement! - it is emblematic of all things a man does."
"The fastest way to succeed is to double your rate of failure."
"I see the ups and downs. I see the mistakes I've made. I see a funny person. I see a serious person. I see a diamond. I see the good times. I see the bad times. And I see knowledge of self. I see knowledge of self. I know who I am. When I look in the mirror, I see me."
"Unfortunately, I made the mistake at one point of putting my address on the back of one of my albums, just to find out what would happen. I received a lot of disturbing mail and calls. Actually, I was living in a hotel, so it was easy enough to find the number. I got a kick out of it for a while. Then I realized what I'd done."
"America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless."
"You can't imagine hip-hop without the Black Panthers. Today, hopefully, the movement can be an inspiration to people. These were people who made mistakes but they were trying to change things."
"Even mistakes can be wonderful."
"I used to be weird about it, but I think sometimes you can learn from watching yourself and all the mistakes you make and try to continue growing. But I'm completely uncomfortable for sure."
"One of the worst mistakes anybody can make is to bet against Americans."
"Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of their due, and us of their experience. Because then one can believe whatever one likes about the past - without having to confront the bones, potsherds, and inscriptions which tell us that people all over the world, time and again, have made similar advances and mistakes."
"I’m crying because I feel wronged. I keep making mistakes and nothing seems to work for me."
"The very things I used to be told off for - daydreaming, exaggerating, making mistakes, wild guessing, contradicting, spying, being obsessive, being reckless - for these, suddenly, I am being praised."
"I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
"Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily."
"Walking through the city streets... Is it by mistake or design?"
"Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth."
