I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

- Edward Gibbon

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.

- Tryon Edwards

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

- John Stuart Mill

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies.

- Voltaire

Imperfection is not our personal problem -- it is a natural part of existing.

- Tara Brach

The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.

- Francis Bacon

My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

- Oscar Wilde

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

- Vincent van Gogh

Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?

- Julia Child

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

If you believe that you can damage, then believe that you can fix.

- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

- Sam Levenson

If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.

- Bill Clinton



I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay



It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.

- Lillian Hellman



Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.

- Heywood Broun



Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

- Thomas Carlyle



Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

- Sigmund Freud



The only person who never makes mistakes is the person who never does anything.

- Denis Waitley



If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

- Mary Pickford



An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

- Bryant H. McGill



The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

- Thomas Paine



A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

- Isaac Asimov



Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.

- Nikki Giovanni



When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

- Jean Rostand



Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

- Billy Wilder



He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

- Tryon Edwards



A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

- Douglas Adams



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.

- Samuel Smiles



If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

- Paul Ricoeur



I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.

- Dan Quayle



An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

- Niels Bohr



Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

- Thomas Jefferson



Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

- Al Franken



[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

- Isaac Asimov



Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

- Virginia Satir



The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

- John Powell



Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people. Difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them, learn from them. That is how they become strong.

- Richard Needham



It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

- Theodore Roosevelt