TOM WILSON, Ziggy, May 30, 2000
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
The noblest spirits are most sensible of the possibility of Error: and the weakest do most hardly lay down an Error.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
An error is not a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
GRENVILLE KLEISER, Dictionary of Proverbs
Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken — errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
- I was born with the wrong sign
- In the wrong house
- With the wrong ascendancy
- I took the wrong road
- That led to the wrong tendencies
- I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
- For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
- On the wrong day of the wrong week
- I used the wrong method with the wrong technique
- Wrong
Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.
MARCEL PROUST, Swann's Way
It sucks the way the world works. You can do a hundred things for people, but you do one bad mistake and everyone crucifies you and that's all they want to remember.
GILBERT ARENAS, SI.com, Feb. 20, 2012
I could take the greatest deal-makers of all time and they've always had something that didn't quite work out. You never want to put yourself in the position where something not working out is bigger than what you are and therefore takes you down. It's got to be in smaller chunks. In all cases, I want to learn something from things that didn't quite work out and learn, so that it doesn’t happen again or so that in the future, you make great decisions. You don't want to make the same mistake twice and you have to learn that early on in your life.
DONALD TRUMP, Forbes, Oct. 3, 2011
It is a comfort not to be mistaken at all points.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, The Two Towers
If you want to condemn yourself for the mistakes you've made, let's be fair, that means you've got to congratulate yourself for all the good things you've done. It's okay to say, "God, I wish I’d done this; yeah, but I did do that." Then it kind of balances out.
TIM ALLEN, Reader's Digest, Oct. 2001
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