48 Quotes About Mistakes

Mistakes are an inevitable part of the human experience, offering valuable lessons and opportunities for growth. They remind us that perfection is a myth and that every misstep can lead to a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us. In this blog post, we've carefully selected 48 quotes that delve into the importance and insight gained from making mistakes. These words of wisdom from various thinkers, leaders, and creatives will inspire you to embrace your errors and turn them into stepping stones toward success. Read on to discover how these profound reflections can change your perspective on mistakes and motivate you to keep moving forward.

1. “If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.” - Confucius

2. “A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.” - Joan Rivers

3. “Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.” - John Lubbock

4. “Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” - L.M. Montgomery

5. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

6. “No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake.” - John Paxton

7. “Every mistake committed is a learning opportunity.” - Santosh Kalwar

8. “Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.” - George Eliot

9. “Niggard prefers mistake rather than loss.” - Toba Beta

10. “The sooner you make a mistake and learn to live with it, the better. You're not responsible for everything. You can't control the way things end up.” - Courtney Summers

11. “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.” - Philip Pullman

12. “In life, there are no mistakes, only lessons.” - Vic Johnson

13. “What sets a man writhing sleepless in bed at night is not having injured his fellow so much as having been wrong; the mere injury he can efface by destroying the victim and the witness but the mistake is his and that is one of his cats which he always prefers to choke to death with butter.” - William Faulkner

14. “Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.” - Roger Von Oech

15. “I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-""The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl." He sounds bitter and sad."If the world will not forgive me," I say softly, "I shall have to learn to forgive myself."He nods in understanding."And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?"I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. "I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you.” - Libba Bray

16. “But slight mistakes accumulate, and grow to gross errors if unchecked.” - Jacqueline Carey

17. “Drama is based on the Mistake.” - W.H. Auden

18. “Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if— as the war ends, or at least starts to end— if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there— Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?” - Rachel Maddow

19. “Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.” - Vera Nazarian

20. “Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'.” - Gordon Korman

21. “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

22. “I believe in recovery, and as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it.” - Ann Richards

23. “الندم هو صوت الفطرة لحظة الخطأ” - مصطفى محمود

24. “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” - George Eliot

25. “..either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the matter. In this way, the supposed miracles of government spending will appear in another light.” - Henry Hazlitt

26. “The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.” - Robert M. Pirsig

27. “Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters")” - Vladimir Nabokov

28. “A mistake isn’t a mistake unless it can’t be put right.” - Sophie Kinsella

29. “The mistake the two of us made,’ I said, ‘was that we skimped the foreplay. I’m not blaming you, it was as much my fault as yours, but it was a fault nonetheless.” - J.M. Coetzee

30. “But we all make mistakes.It’s how we fix them that makes us who weare.” - Jessica Sorensen

31. “It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.” - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

32. “But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.” - Sarah Dessen

33. “The biggest mistake you can ever make it to compare yourself to others. - Gideon” - Jacquelyn Frank

34. “Loving you was the best mistake I ever made.” - Chelsea M. Cameron

35. “The mercy of forgiveness is brought from the strength to accept any situation given and faced. Spiritual independence and humbleness toward life makes life like a flowing river of release. What happens will happen anyways, and everybody can make mistakes. The important thing is to learn how to make a better future from the mistake.” - Hiroko Sakai

36. “Maybe I might be repeating the same mistake again... But don't you think it is far better to regret what I have done than what I have not done yet...?” - Hiroko Sakai

37. “You know what a mistake is, right?""Like when Mommy yells at me and then says she is sorry later.” - Keira Kroft

38. “I'm justthe reason they married.Mum saysI was a surprise.Dad saysI was an accident.Truth is ...I am their mistake.” - Emma Cameron

39. “It's only knitting and it's one of the few times in your life when there are no bad consequences to a mistake.” - Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

40. “God does not make mistakes. What He says He will do, He will.” - Rachelle Ayala

41. “И разбирам колко много нежност разпилях, но не по който трябва.” - Камелия Кондова

42. “Stupidity is to have amnesia over your own faults when the person you hate makes theirs.” - Shannon L. Alder

43. “Junko: That sort of thing happens all the time. You get drunk on your own "correctness," and the more stubborn you get, the further happiness flies away from you. It's a bitter pill to swallow.Madoka: I wonder if there's any way I can help...Junko: Even good advice from others won't bring any clear solutions to someone in that frame of mind. ...Even so, you want to find a solution? Then go ahead and screw up. If she's being too correct, then somebody should make mistakes for her.Madoka: I should screw up...?Junko: Yep! Tell a really bad lie. Run away in the face of something scary. She may not understand what you're trying to do at first, but there are times when you realize in hindsight that a mistake was the right thing to do... During those times when you're just stuck for an answer, making a mistake is one method of unsticking yourself. Madoka, you've grown up to be a good kid. You don't tell lies, and you don't do bad things. You're a girl who works hard at what she thinks is right. You get an "A" as a child. So before you become an adult, you have to start practicing falling down. You see, we adults have our pride and responsibilities, so it becomes harder and harder to make mistakes.” - Magica Quartet

44. “Each mistake teaches you something new about yourself. There is no failure, remember, except in no longer trying. It is the courage to continue that counts.” - Chris Bradford

45. “Life is funny like that, making us pay for the same stupid mistakes even after we've learned from them thoroughly.” - R.K. Lilley

46. “My biggest mistake is in believing there are limits to how bad it can get.” - Laura Wiess Such a Pretty Girl

47. “Your best teacher is your last mistake.” - Ralph Nader

48. “A great nation is like a great man:When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.Having realized it, he admits it.Having admitted it, he corrects it.He considers those who point out his faultsas his most benevolent teachers.He thinks of his enemyas the shadow that he himself casts.” - Lao Tzu