Quotes about mistakes

They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

Keep this truth ever before you—Ignorance never did any one any harm, error alone is fatal, and we do not lose our way through ignorance but through self-confidence.

I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.

"When I consider," she added, in a yet more agitated voice, "that I might have prevented it! — I who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of it only — some part of what I learnt — to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not have happened. But it is all, all too late now."

The paths of error are various and infinite.

(Of Shakespeare) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery (243)