“The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all.”

— Homer 1 via Robert Fagles
Primogenitor of Western culture
from Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

— Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

67. Three Treasures

“Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.”

— Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

43. No Effort, No Trace

“Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.”

— Sun Tzu 孙武 544 – 496 BCE via Lionel Giles and James Clavell
(Sun Zi)
HIstory's supreme strategist
from Art of War 孙子兵法

“Men are men, they needs must err.”

— Euripides 480 – 406 BCE
Ancient humanitarian influence continuing today

“Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”

— Antisthenes 445 – 365 BCE
Creator of a religious tradition without religion

“Learn from the mistakes of others…you can’t live long enough to make them all yourselves.”

— Chandragupta Maurya 340 – 297 BCE
Ashoka’s grandfather, founder of the Maurya Empire

“Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.”

— Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history

“Mistake upon mistake compounds to become the sum total of one's knowledge.”

— Anonymous 1 via joshaku shushaku
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history
from Japanese Slogan

“There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Just don't respond with encores.”

— Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history

“What is the use of running when you are on the wrong road?”

— Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history

“Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.”

— Seneca ˈsɛnɪkə 4 BCE – 65 CE
(Lucius Annaeus)

“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”

— Seneca ˈsɛnɪkə 4 BCE – 65 CE
(Lucius Annaeus)

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”

— Plutarch 46 – 120 CE
(Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus)

43. No Effort, No Trace

“When good fortune comes to the mouth, the tongue accidentally pushes it out.”

— Gesar of Ling གེ་སར་རྒྱལ་པོ། 1 via Robin Kornman
from Gesar of Ling Epic

“When the bottom is filled with rubbish, just walk though the sludge.”

— Hóngzhì Zhēngjué 宏智正覺 1091 – 1157 CE
(Shōgaku)

58. Goals Without Means

“Mistakes always happen when an easy place is reached.”

— Yoshida Kenkō 兼好 1284 – 1350 CE via Sir George Bailey Sansom
Inspiration of self-reinvention
from Essays in Idleness

“And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”

— John Donne 1572 – 1631 CE
from Songs and Sonnets

54. Planting Well

“I made every mistake that can be made but I just kept pushing.”

— René Descartes 1596 – 1650 CE

43. No Effort, No Trace

“Study people as deeply as you study books and you won't make painful mistakes about character. (chapter 157)”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Shan Dao
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

“Do not make much ado about nothing… Troublesome things should not be taken too seriously… It is preposterous to take to heart what should be thrown over your shoulders.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE

63. Easy as Hard

“It is only of little known people that the failings are little known.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, chapter #125
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

“The wise try to hide their mistakes while fools boast of them.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, #126
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

“No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.”

— Alexander Pope 1688 – 1744 CE
Second most quoted English writer

“A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.”

— Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790 CE
from Poor Richard's Almanack

9. Know When to Stop

“Life is but a series of misunderstandings.”

— Diderot 1713 – 1784 CE

“Use unfortunate events to polish oneself, to find increase within reduction, to change a faulty beginning into a blameless end.”

— Liu Yiming 刘一明 1734 – 1821 CE via Thomas Cleary, Shan Dao, #42 Increase
(Liu I-ming)
from Taoist I Ching, , Zhouyi chanzhen 周易闡真

“You confess your follies, indeed; but still you hug and cherish them; and no reformation can be hoped where there is no repentance.”

— Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826 CE
from Dialog of the Head and the Heart (1786)

“He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks… If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn.”

— Jeremy Bentham 1748 – 1832 CE
from Principles of Morals and Legislation

65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”

— William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

“Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us. It would save us from many mistakes and foolish thoughts.”

— Robert Burns 1759 – 1796 CE
from To a Louse

“That the world has no ethical significance but only a physical one is the greatest and most pernicious of errors, the fundamental error, the intrinsically perverse view... and despite all the religions which all assert the opposite, this fundamental error never quite dies out but raises its head again and again”

— Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE via R. J. Hollingdale
from Essays and Aphorisms

“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 1795 – 1881 CE
"Great Man” theory of history creator

“One of the mistakes most often committed—and which are the sources of the greatest practical errors in human affairs—is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas.”

— John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873 CE

“Attack and defense, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man.”

— Wilhelm Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883 CE
from Religion and Art (1880)

“I am past scorching; not easily can you scorch a scar.”

— Herman Melville 1819 – 1891 CE
from Moby Dick or The Whale

“the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder why we are so fond of it”

— George Eliot 1819 – 1880 CE
(Mary Anne Evans)
Pioneering literary outsider

from Middlemarch

“Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.”

— George Eliot 1819 – 1880 CE
(Mary Anne Evans)
Pioneering literary outsider

from Middlemarch

“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”

— Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

47. Effortless Success

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE
from Twilight of the Idols

27. No Trace

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

27. No Trace

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work… Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”

— Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931 CE
America's greatest inventor

“The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”

— Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900 CE
from Picture of Dorian Gray

“Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes.”

— Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900 CE

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”

— Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 CE

47. Effortless Success

“O God! we thank Thee that Thou hast given us faults and thereby made us men.”

— Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 CE
from A Thousand and One Epigrams

“From error to error one discovers the entire truth.”

— Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 CE

“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”

— Nikola Tesla Никола Тесла 1856 – 1943 CE

“Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”

— Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 CE

43. No Effort, No Trace

“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.”

— Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936 CE
Greatest—in-English—short-story writer

from Under The Deodars

“We really only know what is new, what suddenly, by a change in tone, strikes us with a new sensation, what habit has not yet supplanted by its pale facsimiles.”

— Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922 CE
Apostle of Ordinary Mind
from In Search of Lost Time

“The delightful mirage that love projects entices men into 'mistakes' like marrying their cook or their best friend's mistress. These often become the only poetic act they accomplish in their entire lives.”

— Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922 CE via Justin O'Brien, Shan Dao
Apostle of Ordinary Mind
from In Search of Lost Time

“Not the least of what I have learned has come from my errors and defeats.”

— Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist
from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

— Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955 CE

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

— James Joyce 1882 – 1941 CE
from Ulysses

“It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

— Franklin Roosevelt 1882 – 1945 CE
(FDR)
Champion and creator of a more just and equitable society

“Difficulty, however, has always been life's stimulant, awakening and goading all our impulses, both good and bad, in order to make us overleap the obstacle which has suddenly risen before us.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE via P. A. Bien
from Report to Greco

“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 – 1962 CE

23. Nothing and Not

“Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it.”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE

13. Honor and Disgrace

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951 CE
One of the world's most famous philosophers

“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”

— Pearl Buck 1892 – 1973 CE
from What America Means to Me (1943)

“On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”

— Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE

79. No Demands

“Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing… after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked.”

— Buckminster Fuller 1895 – 1983 CE

“Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.”

— Buckminster Fuller 1895 – 1983 CE

43. No Effort, No Trace

“Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.”

— Lín Yǔtáng 林語堂 1895 – 1976 CE

“This is what most religions overlook in their yearning after perfection—the fact that absolute perfection would be mere stagnation, ultimate spiritual death. Therefore, the ideal of the perfect saint would result in an inhuman abomination, a robot, an insensible, cold, petrified, closed, and in every sense finished individual.”

— Anagarika​ (Lama) Govinda 1898 – 1985 CE
(Ernst Hoffmann)
Pioneer of Tibetan Buddhism to the West

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

“If I could live again my life, in the next I’ll try to make more mistakes...I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,”

— Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986 CE
Literary Explorer of Labyrinthian Dreams, Mirrors, and Mythologies

“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don't freeze up.”

— Thomas Wolfe 1900 – 1938 CE
(Thomas Clayton Wolfe)
Father of autobiographical fiction

“People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”

— James Hilton 1900 – 1954 CE
from Lost Horizon

71. Sick of Sickness
58. Goals Without Means

“Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.”

— Karl Popper 1902 – 1994 CE
Major Philosopher of Science
from In Search of a Better World (1984)

“Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice.”

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE via Trudy Dixon
from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

“Buddha is always helping you. But usually we refuse Buddha’s offer. For instance,sometimes you ask for something special. This means that you are refusing to accept the treasures you already have.”

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

20. Unconventional Mind

“It’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.”

— Grace Hopper 1906 – 1992 CE
(Grace Brewster Murray Hopper )

“It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven’t done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.”

— Hannah Arendt 1906 – 1975 CE
Fearless researcher into the darker reaches of the human psyche

“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.”

— Lewis Thomas 1913 – 1993 CE
Gestaltist of science and art
from Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done.”

— Lewis Thomas 1913 – 1993 CE
Gestaltist of science and art
from Medusa and the Snail (1974)

“the biggest error in the world is thinking we ever know what another person is truly like. Even if you've lived with somebody for 30 years, you don't know what they're like.”

— Charlotte Joko Beck 1917 – 2011 CE
Authentic, pioneering Western Zen master

from Ordinary Wonder

“There is nothing better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve the next time.”

— Malcolm X الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎‎ 1925 – 1965 CE

“Every American wants MORE MORE of the world… But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter… at the expense of what really counts… You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.”

— Allen Ginsberg 1926 – 1997 CE

46. Enough

“One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers.”

— Robert M. Pirsig 1928 – 2017 CE
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“Smart people learn from their mistakes. Smarter people learn from other people’s mistakes. The smartest people learn from smart people’s mistakes. And the smartest people are the smartest people because they have learned from the most mistakes.”

— Shan Dao 山道 1933 CE –

“And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah”

— Leonard Cohen 1934 – 2016 CE
from Hallelujah

“Forgiving implies that you were wrong, but that now it's okay. Instead, the mistakes or the neuroses become adornments... each mistake, each unskillful action, becomes another brick in your wall, which you can build higher and higher.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Dome Darshan

“A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it.”

— John Lennon 1940 – 1980 CE

“The sense of ego depends on clinging to the past. By seeing this clearly and letting go, we can prevent our past mistakes from repeating themselves over and over.”

— Francesca Fremantle 1941 CE –
from Luminous Emptiness

“The fastest way to become successful is to make lots of mistakes.”

— Paulo Lugari 1944 CE – via Alan Weisman

43. No Effort, No Trace

“If you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style.”

— John Prine 1946 CE –

“Your big mistake is to assume your brain generates a bubble of consciousness you call 'Me.'... The truth is that you're not your own private 'I.' You are to consciousness what the flame of a match is to the Milky Way.Your brain only taps into consciousness. You aren't a broadcaster. You're a transceiver.”

— David Mitchell 1969 CE –
from Utopia Avenue

“mistakes are not something to be feared... When our leaders reveal their gaps in knowledge and missteps, not only are we more willing to help, but we too are more willing to share when we make mistakes [before] they become too big to contain.”

— Simon Sinek 1973 CE –
from Leaders Eat Last

“Every smartphone contains more information than the ancient Library of Alexandria... Yet humanity is closer than ever to annihilating itself.”

— Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Nexus