Quotes about mistakes

“I don’t think they can change their minds. When you get to that level of power and knowledge and perfection, the question of what you should do next gets increasingly obvious. Everything is very rule-governed. All you can ever do in any given situation is the most gloriously perfect thing, and there’s only one of them. Finally there aren’t any choices left to make at all.”

“You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.”

“The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals.”

Over time, my crush on Balder the Beautiful was converted into a crush on Ross, Franklin, Nares, Shackleton, Oates, and Scott.

I should mention that all of the above explorers were unqualified failures. Not coincidentally, they were also all British. Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure.

“What is your theory?” my assistant asked, but again I declined to answer. A mistaken theory that never went farther than its originator’s mind does not count as an error.

A hero cannot triumph all the time.

Sometimes he will be defeated, but how he faces that defeat is a test of his character.

[...] If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.

“But don’t make the same mistakes that we have, Irene.” Her mouth quirked in a smile. “Make some new ones.”

I knew I'd failed a test whose rules I didn't yet understand.

Still you can't keep doing the coulda and the woulda and the shoulda. And if there's one thing I know it's this. Doesn't matter how smart you are, or even how careful or lucky, there's some mistakes you just keep making over and over.

The mistakes of the past do not excuse the mistakes of the present.

"Darling, you're talking as if all normal-length lives were planned. They aren't, you know. People have to learn how to live them—and by the time they find out, they're nearly gone. No time to remedy mistakes.

As much as we think science is about being right, the actual practice of the stuff is largely focused on being wrong.

Why? Because being open to the possibility that you might be wrong is exactly how you get less wrong over time, sort of like saying “I’d better find all the holes in my argument before someone else can." Strangely, the way to make your ideas stronger is to try to break them. Looking for errors in your understanding rather than just trying to find supporting evidence is the best way to improve your ideas.

If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try exactly the same thing again. You won’t succeed, again. Instead, have a think, evaluate, correct, modify and then try again. Creativity is an iterative process.