Top 100 By Mistake Quotes
#1. Be guided by the love of enjoyment, rather than the fear of making a mistake, when things are perfect, in a way, nothing has been learned.
Josephine Araldo
#2. The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.
James Anthony Froude
#3. Great men have been characterized by the greatness of their mistakes as well as by the greatness of their achievements.
Abraham Myerson
#4. People say to me all the time that I threw some money into some guy's coffee cup [by accident, thinking they were poor]. People do make the same sort of mistake. I've made attempts to volunteer that have been calamitous!
Nicole Holofcener
#5. The past can be a rudder that guides you or an anchor tha hinders you. Leave your mistakes with God and look to the future by faith.
Warren W. Wiersbe
#6. Hi,' he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake.
J.D. Salinger
#7. I got turned on to rock music almost by mistake when I was seven years old.
Jello Biafra
#8. My philosophy is that all stocks are bad. There are no good stocks unless they go up in price. If they go down instead, you have to cut your losses fast Letting losses run is the most serious mistake made by most investors.
William O'Neil
#9. It is in quiet that our best ideas occur to us. Don't make the mistake of believing that by a frantic kind of dashing around you are being your most effective and efficient self. Don't assume that you are wasting time when you take time out for thought.
Napoleon Hill
#10. I went camping and borrowed a circus tent by mistake. I didn't notice until I got it set up. People complained because they couldn't see the lake.
Steven Wright
#11. He makes a great mistake ... who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection.
Terence
#12. I am deeply worried because we are seeing an unleashing of violence by 2,000 to 3,000 thugs who come to smash and loot. My objective is to avoid mistakes by the police, so that people can protest in safety.
Nicolas Sarkozy
#13. You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes.
Richard Rohr
#14. Your biggest problem in ministry and in life isn't that you'll make a mistake, but that you'll be consumed by the fear of making a mistake.
Karl Vaters
#15. It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.
Charles Caleb Colton
#16. Male fruit flies also become a bit randy, although they are less likely to mate successfully - perhaps because, in their alcohol-induced haze, they frequently court other males by mistake, instead of females.
Jennifer Ouellette
#17. Anonymity is an abused privilege, abused most by people who mistake vitriol for wisdom and cynicism for wit.
Danny Wallace
#18. Some of the steps you take may end up being detours or out-and-out mistakes. By staying focused on your vision, though, you'll find even those steps useful in the creating process.
David Emerald Womeldorff
#19. Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by.
Garry Kasparov
#21. Anyhow, isn't it better to think we've got here by
mistake?
Jean-Paul Sartre
#22. A man who knows that he is saved by believing in Christ does not, when he is baptized, lift his baptism into a saving ordinance. In fact, he is the very best protester against that mistake, because he holds that he has no right to be baptized until he is saved.
Charles Spurgeon
#23. It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness. It is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for all human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#24. But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect? ... aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?
Libba Bray
#25. It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake.
Junius
#26. I made a mistake by being ejected from the presidency. Next time, I will choose a Cabinet which will allow me to be life President.
Nelson Mandela
#27. Some people learn by the mistakes of others, but most of us are the others.
William Prescott
#28. You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.
Helen Mirren
#30. I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'
Barbara Jordan
#31. Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can't always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.
Charles Stross
#32. All the mistakes committed by artists are due to their having separated themselves from truth, believing that their imagination is stronger. There is nothing stronger than nature. With nature in front of us we can do everything well.
Joaquin Sorolla
#33. You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that's part of it: knowing that you're not shut out forever, and that there's a goal you still can reach.
Johnny Cash
#34. I can accept no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
Scott Hildreth
#35. One of the things I discover a lot in marriage counseling is the husband or wife trying to get their spiritual thirst quenched by their partner; I think that's a real common mistake that we make.
Max Lucado
#37. A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#38. In very big companies, you find less entrepreneurialism than you really want to see. Success is defined as 'don't make a mistake.' And you get to be the C.E.O. by outlasting everybody else, then you're there for five or six years, and you want to get your bonus on the way out.
Bernard L. Schwartz
#39. I started lip-synching with "Losing My Religion." There were a few horrendous mistakes we made, but I own those mistakes. I'm embarrassed by them. I always say when I look back at anything I've ever done, it's with equal dollops of humiliation and triumphant glory.
Michael Stipe
#40. Mistake to suppose that mere good will is, by itself, a sufficient guarantee that all our efforts will finally attain to a good result. Serious mistakes can be made, even with the greatest good will.
Thomas Merton
#41. Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without a comment is a wonderful social grace ... Children who have the habit of constantly correcting should be stopped before they grow up to drive spouses and everyone else crazy by interrupting stories to say, 'No, dear
it was Tuesday, not Wednesday.
Judith Martin
#42. I had a very bad time with acid. I did that classic thing of looking in the mirror by mistake and seeing the devil. But I took it several times, because you always think that next time you might have the wonderful time that everyone else is having.
Robbie Coltrane
#43. I was afraid that I had made a profound, irrevocable mistake, and that, as in a fantastic tale, if I did not find something firm and magical to grab a hold of right that moment we would both be swallowed up by a noisome gang of black shapes and evil black birds.
Michael Chabon
#44. What I've learned over the years is that people shouldn't be defined by a single mistake. Everyone messes up," she said. "You have to forgive yourself and move one.
Gena Showalter
#45. In New York we have streets exploding and innocent Buddhist girls being stabbed in the neck and cabdrivers refusing to help her. If we happen into a nightclub by mistake, when we leave the doorman will be lying in the street surrounded by police.
Cynthia Heimel
#46. Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
Gore Vidal
#47. Hating a book is not unlike hating a person; in fact it's tempting to just go ahead and hate the author personally, by proxy, qua human being, except that I know that would be a mistake.
Lev Grossman
#48. It would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it, they pay the penalty, but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant.
Calvin Coolidge
#49. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden
#50. So to answer your question, I'm not entirely sure how I ended up where I am today, in the sense that nobody in my family is an actor. It just happened by mistake.
Hugh Dancy
#51. Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers.
Josiah Warren
#52. By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs, and improve care
George W. Bush
#53. Make your mistakes work for you by learning from them.
Donald Trump
#54. We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.
James C. Collins
#55. The really important thing in life is not the avoidance of mistakes, but the obedience of faith. By obedience, the man is led step by step to correct his errors, whereas nothing will ever happen to him if he doesn't get going.
Paul Tournier
#56. When I was 11, I burned a field down by mistake. It was an empty field, probably about 10 acres in size. Me and my friend were lighting firecrackers, and we ended up burning down the entire field. We got found out, and I think I was grounded for about three months.
Christopher Masterson
#57. How do you become better tomorrow? By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid of standing still. Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you. So how do you become better tomorrow? By becoming better today.
Benjamin Franklin
#58. It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.
Garrett Hardin
#59. Oversimplifying is the first grave mistake we make when confronted by complexity; overconfidence is the second. And there is a third: based on our overconfidence in our oversimplified conclusions, we overreact.
Ted Cadsby
#60. Nothing is easy in war. Mistakes are always paid for in casualties and troops are quick to sense any blunder made by their commanders.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#61. All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table.
Bent Larsen
#62. A teachable spirit and a humbleness to admit your ignorance or your mistake will save you a lot of pain. However, if you're a person who knows it all, then you've got a lot of heavy-hearted experiences coming your way.
Ron Carpenter Jr.
#63. A person can't brood over one mistake, or waste time feeling sorry for himself, or take on any sort of persecution complex. Today I realize that once you have made a mistake, you must accept it, profit by it, and then totally dismiss it from your mind.
Bart Starr
#64. We are apt to mistake our vocation by looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and by stepping over the ordinary ones that lie directly in the road before us.
Hannah More
#65. There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis.
Os Guinness
#66. By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind.
Huineng
#67. Grateful for his mistakes, man should be the gods, because by overcoming the faults the stronger force is developed.
Rudolf Steiner
#68. If a man didn't make mistakes he'd own the world in a month.But if he didn't profit by his mistakes he wouldn't own a blessed thing.
Edwin Lefevre
#69. It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.
Samuel Adams
#70. I done learned my mistake and learned to do what's right by it. You still trying to get something for nothing. Life don't owe you nothing. You owe it to yourself.
- Troy -
August Wilson
#71. I always say that I'm really inspired by mistakes and things that kind of go wrong.
Alexander Wang
#72. When you write the script, you're home in a room by yourself, and you're writing, and there's no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices.
Woody Allen
#73. Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
Zhuangzi
#74. It is a mistake to believe that science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form to replace the religious catechism by something else, even a scientific one.
Sigmund Freud
#75. Most of what I learned as an entrepreneur was by trial and error.
Gordon Moore
#76. The most ominous of fallacies - the belief that things can be kept static by inaction
Freya Stark
#77. I am not mortal. I do not play by your rules. I have killed and hunted men for sport. Do not mistake me for a human woman, princeling.
Sarah J. Maas
#78. Boxing's an art, it's a science, and you don't go out to knock people out. If they happen to get knocked out, they happen to run into one of these bricks by mistake [looks at his fists], that's their fault.
Roy Jones Jr.
#79. If I learned all this so slowly it was because I learned by my mistakes, and some time always elapses between making a mistake and realizing it, and more time between realizing it and exactly determining it.
Jesse Lauriston Livermore
#80. You don't win by making sensational plays; you win by not making mistakes.
Bum Phillips
#81. Don't get bitter and twisted and nasty by life. You may have been wronged or cheated on; two wrongs never make a right. Instead learn your mistakes and learn your lessons. Remain strong with your head held high.
Angela Merkel
#82. The quickest way to rectify that mistake (choosing the wrong person) is by learning from that, moving on, and choosing much more wisely in the future.
Greg Behrendt
#83. The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
Umberto Eco
#84. With him, I didn't have to be afraid, not of what I could do intentionally or by mistake. I din't have to throw up every defence I possessed to keep my brain's wandering hands still, because Clancy was more than capable of keeping me out of his head.
Alexandra Bracken
#85. I got bitten by fangs that went to sink'n'drink, but somewhere between swilling'n'killing, the vampire messed up and turned me into a big fat mistake.
Brian Meehl
#86. No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think.
A.A. Milne
#87. No contradictions will arise as long as Finite Man does not mistake the infinite for something fixed, as long as he is not led by an acquired habit of mind to regard the infinite as something bounded.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#88. Unsuspecting people make a fatal mistake when they give their allegiance to a system of thought by focusing on its benefits while they ignore its systemic contradictions.
Ravi Zacharias
#89. I don't panic. The same thing applies to me as to everybody else, so I'm given to euphoria and despair. And I would say that I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.
George Soros
#90. February turned into March and Hiccup was still thinking. A few flowers made the mistake of appearing and were immediately blasted out of existence by a couple of hard frosts that had kept themselves back for this very purpose.
Cressida Cowell
#91. Shame often causes me to hide my mistakes from others. But really, when I make a mistake, I should make it loud and clear, so I can see that it didn't work as a strategy, and be able to make a course correction, either by myself or with the help of others.
Sharon Weil
#92. All men have a natural fear of making a mistake
by believing too well of a person. However, the error of believing too ill of a person is perhaps not feared, at least not in the same degree as the other.
Soren Kierkegaard
#93. To measure your needs by that which is projected via mass media is a mistake that has no mercy. The average person views a minimum of one thousand advertisements a day. To say "no" to the most outrageous commercials is an act of responsibility that needs to be taught early and often.
Haki R. Madhubuti
#94. Profit by your own mistakes and profit by the mistakes of others. The referees were calling ball handling violations like they were getting commissions.
John Kessel
#95. Acting for screen is very different from acting on stage, and then obviously when you dance ... everything is a physical embodiment. But the discipline is the same approach. You have to take both things seriously; nothing well-crafted is by mistake.
Amanda Schull
#96. I hope I remember everything," said Toni.
"You won't," said Trapp. "That's how you learn. But after you make the same mistake one, or two, or five times, you'll eventually get it. And then you'll make new mistakes.
Louis Sachar
#97. Have you ever been in a pub where everyone goes armed? Oh, things are a little polite at first, I'll grant you, and then some twerp drinks out of the wrong mug or picks up someone else's change by mistake and five minutes later you're picking noses out of the beer nuts
Terry Pratchett
#98. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.
Albert Einstein
#99. Make no mistake: I love women. I'm married to one, I was birthed by one, and I played one in my high school production of 'Romeo and Juliet.' No one else could fit into the bodice.
Stephen Colbert
#100. The significant mistake of the traditionalists is they require the people to start where the church is instead of the church starting where the people are. Innovators begin by asking, 'What do we need to do to reach the people where they are?'
Leith Anderson
