"The interest of the people lies in being able to join organizations, advocate causes, and make political "mistakes" without being subjected to governmental penalties."
Mistake quotes
Mistake
6.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Mistake
Browse quotes that often appear alongside mistake — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Mistake quotes (page 60 of 320)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time, he would reach the highest measure of his expectation. . . . If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished men of the twentieth century could hope to obtain, what about you and me?"
"Do not make mistakes about character. Better be cheated in the price than in the quality of goods."
"These are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made, we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal. ... What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things."
"Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes."
"I would have I think made a bigger mistake if I had said, "Eh, chemical weapons. That doesn't really change my calculus." I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons [in Syria]."
"At least once a year, I imagine that I am about to die. Looking back as truthfully as I can at my entire life, I give full attention to the things I wish hadn’t occurred. Recognizing these mistakes honestly but without self-recrimination, I try to rejoice in the innate wisdom that allows me to see so bravely, and I feel compassion for how I so frequently messed up. Then I can go forward. The future is wide open, and what I do with it is up to me."
"The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre."
"I don't know about style mistakes."
"And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the senses?"
"Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force."
"Mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm no longer afraid of not making enough mistakes."
"My approach to the game has been the same at all the places I've been. Vanilla. The sure way. That means, first of all, to win physically. If you got eleven on a field, and they beat the other eleven physically, they'll win. They will start forcing mistakes. They'll win in the fourth quarter."
"Now hoppin'-john was F. Jasmine's very favorite food. She had always warned them to wave a plate of rice and peas before her nose when she was in her coffin, to make certain there was no mistake; for if a breath of life was left in her, she would sit up and eat, but if she smelled the hopping-john, and did not stir, then they could just nail down the coffin and be certain she was truly dead."
"One peculiarity of an astronaut's job is that we do everything in public. Also, you don't want to make a mistake. In the best case, it's an embarrassment, in the worst, death. That's also part of the training. They teach you to think like an astronaut, like they do with a pilot, a military man, a fireman. You dissociate in your mind the gravity of the consequences of your mistake."
"Chairman Mao was after all a principal founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China. In evaluating his merits and mistakes, we hold that his mistakes were only secondary. What he did for the Chinese people can never be erased. In our hearts we Chinese will always cherish him as a founder of our Party and our state."
"The NFL doesn't like mistakes."
"There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest man on being casually taken for a housebreaker does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?"
"As I look back I know that most of the mistakes I have made have come when I didn't listen to myself, when I didn't trust my instincts... I believe you need to listen, carefully, to hear your inner voice. And then, you have to do what it says."