The beauty about mistakes is that they may hurt for a little while, but you will soon realize the life lessons they will bring and how they will help you grow as a person. We compiled some of the most beautiful quotes about mistakes to inspire and remind you of their positive impact on your life.
Quotes About Mistakes
1. Be tenacious. The world will change, things will go wrong. Life is messy. – Ann Sherry
2. If you’re not making some notable mistakes along the way, you’re certainly not taking enough business and career chances. – Sallie Krawcheck
3. Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. – Eleanor Roosevelt
4. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone deserves a second chance. – Mo’ne Davis
5. I skated, fell down and learned to pick myself up in front of millions. – Michelle Kwan
6. You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows. You don’t think your way into becoming yourself. – Anne Lamott
7. You need to give yourself permission to be human. – Joyce Brothers
8. Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts. – Nikki Giovanni
9. What is done cannot be undone, but at least one can keep it from happening again. – Anne Frank
10. Mistakes grow your brain. – Jo Boaler
11. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. – Sophia Loren
12. Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. – Mary Tyler Moore
13. Learning by making mistakes and not duplicating them is what life is about. – Lindsay Fox
14. If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum. – Holly Near
15. I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. – Marilyn Monroe
16. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
17. Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? – L.M. Montgomery
18. Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. – Mahatma Gandhi
19. Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dali
20. When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way. – Paulo Coelho
21. If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you’ve made, if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go. – Steve Maraboli
22. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. – Napoleon Bonaparte
23. To err is human, to forgive, divine. – Alexander Pope
24. We learn from failure, not from success. – Bram Stoker
25. Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us. – L.M. Montgomery
26. It was one thing to make a mistake, it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you, you’d be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you’re going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn’t be there. Either that, or you’d confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable. – Jodi Picoult
27. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. – Oscar Wilde
28. It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. – Mahatma Gandhi
29. Some mistakes just have greater consequences than others. But you don’t have to let the result of one mistake be the thing that defines you. You, Clark, have the choice not to let that happen. – Jojo Moyes
30. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. – Steve Maraboli
31. We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward. – Alison Croggon
32. Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others. – Brandon Mull
33. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. – Rita Mae Brown
34. I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being–forgive me–rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger. – J.K. Rowling
35. It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes. We need to learn from our errors and move on. – Steve Maraboli
36. I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them. – Joe Abercrombie
37. When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve. – Roy T. Bennett
38. At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them. – Angie Thomas
39. All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride. – Sophocles
40. Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. – George Bernard Shaw
41. Don’t confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok. We all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you. – Steve Maraboli
42. When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‘You’re no good,’ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No. You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness. – Joyce Meyer
43. Life is all about evolution. What looks like a mistake to others has been a milestone in my life. Even if people have betrayed me, even if my heart was broken, even if people misunderstood or judged me, I have learned from these incidents. We are human and we make mistakes, but learning from them is what makes the difference. – Amisha Patel
44. To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on. – Dave Pelzer
45. If you make the mistake of looking back too much, you aren’t focused enough on the road in front of you. – Brad Paisley
46. A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying. – B. F. Skinner
47. A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether. – Roy H. Williams
48. The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember, jobs are owned by the company, you own your career. – Earl Nightingale
49. Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony. – Paulo Coelho
50. I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people’s ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That’s the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent. – Rahul Dravid
51. You can criticize me. You can crucify me. You can love me. You can hate me. Just don’t make the mistake of calling me inauthentic, because you’d be a damn liar. – Stephen A. Smith
52. I am comfortable with doing mistakes. It’s a normal thing. If a mistake happens because of my own decision, I am OK with it. – Vijay Deverakonda
53. Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. – Eckhart Tolle
54. I’m grateful for every stupid mistake and dumb joke I tried to make. – Bo Burnham
55. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character. – Dale Turner
56. A successful competition for me is always going out there and putting 100 percent into whatever I’m doing. It’s not always winning. People, I think, mistake that it’s just winning. Sometimes it could be, but for me, it’s hitting the best sets I can, gaining confidence, and having a good time and having fun. – Simone Biles
57. Failure is the key to success, each mistake teaches us something. – Morihei Ueshiba
58. 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
59. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. – Alexander Pope
60. The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. – John Powell
61. Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth. – Richelle E. Goodrich
62. You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing. – Stella Adler
63. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over. – Richard Branson
64. If you live life 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. – William Clinton
65. I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something. – Neil Gaiman
66. Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. – Oscar Wilde
67. Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow. – Henry Haskins
68. You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. – Samuel Levenson
69. All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes. – Winston Churchill
70. There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go. – Richard Bach
71. As you begin to take action toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must realize that not every action will be perfect. Not every action will produce the desired result. Not every action will work. Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right. – Jack Canfield
72. 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. – Ai Franken
73. Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without?mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on? – Peter McWilliams
74. When you make a ‘mistake’, don’t look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. ‘Mistakes’ are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. – Hugh White
75. 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
76. Don’t carry your mistakes around with you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones. Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
77. Good people are good because they have come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success. – William Saroyan
78. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. – H. Stanley Judd
79. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. – Niels Bohr
80. Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom. – Phyllis Theroux
81. Any married man should forget his mistakes, no use two people remembering the same thing. – Duane Dewel
82. It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. – Bill Gates
83. Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit. – Napoleon Hill
84. I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life’s experiences, bad and good, make you who you are. Erasing any of life’s experiences would be a great mistake. – Luis Miguel
85. Never say, ‘oops’. Always say, ‘Ah, interesting’.
86. Making mistakes simply means you are learning faster. – Weston H. Agor
87. A mistake should be your teacher, not your attacker. A mistake is a lesson, not a loss. It is a temporary, necessary detour, not a dead end.
88. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. – James Joyce
89. We all make them, the difference is what we do after we make the mistake, how we see the mistake – a learning experience or a failure. – Catherine Pulsifer
90. Good people make mistakes and hurt others, then they learn from their mistakes and try not to make them again. – Bob Anderson
91. I stopped doing the things in business that had made me so successful in the first place, a devastating mistake business owners often make. – Tom Corson-Knowles
92. If you want to grow, you need to get over any fear you may have of making mistakes. – John C. Maxwell
93. Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent. – Billy Graham
94. One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. – Winston Churchill
95. Admitting to a mistake means refusing to use other people as scape-goats to avoid responsibility but rather courageously owning up to every single one of them. – T. Whitmore
96. The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God. – Rick Warren
97. The mistake I made, was the same as many others, was to limit my thinking and still continue to believe I am still who I once was. – Sam Rivers
98. The most important part of you will always been what’s on the inside. You will make mistakes, everyone does, but that’s why pencils have erasers. – Amy Hughes
99. It is okay to experience painful, sharp pain from time to time. You will need it to become a better.
100. Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.
101. Remember that life’s greatest lessons are usually learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes.
102. Don’t mention a person’s past mistakes when they are trying to change. That’s like throwing rocks at them while they are struggling to climb a mountain.
103. You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you. – Maxwell Maltz
104. When someone does something wrong, don’t forget all the things they did right.
105. When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it. Admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it. – Paul Bear Bryant
106. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Move on.
107. Mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them. – Bruce Lee
108. Making mistakes is better than faking perfections.
109. Everyone makes mistakes in life, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay for them for the rest of their life.
110. If you want to grow, you need to get over any fear you have of making mistakes. – John C. Maxwell
111. A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. – George Bernard Shaw
112. It’s not how we make mistakes, but how we correct them that defines us. – Rachel Wolchin
113. Mistakes are proof you are trying.
114. You fall, you rise, you make mistakes, you live, and you learn.
115. The biggest mistake I have made in my life is letting people stay in my life far longer than they deserve.
116. Always make new mistakes. – Esther Dyson
117. Learn from other people’s mistakes. – Tai Lopez
118. You can’t make the same mistake twice. The second time you make it, it’s no longer a mistake. It’s a choice.
119. There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons. – Denis Waitley
120. Make glorious amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody has ever made before. Do not freeze, do not stop, do not worry. Whatever you are scared of doing, do it. – Neil Gaiman
121. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. – James Joyce
122. If you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You are doing things you have never done before, and more importantly, you are doing something. – Neil Gaiman
123. You cannot correct your mistakes by pointing out the mistakes of others.
124. Nothing is a mistake, and nothing is something you should regret, it all happens for a reason, there is a purpose for and behind everything.
125. Mistakes increase your experience and experiences decrease your mistakes. If you learn from your mistakes than others learn from your success.
126. There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher. – Robin Sharma
127. No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you’re still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying. – Tony Robbins
128. There is no sense in punishing your future for the mistakes of your past. Forgive yourself, grow from it, and then let it go. – Melanie Koulouris
129. In the real world, the smartest people are people who make mistakes and learn. In school, the smartest people don’t make mistakes. – Robert T. Kiyosaki
130. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
131. Don’t live in the past, thinking about mistakes or changes you made. Think of your life as a book, move forward, close one chapter and open another. Learn from your mistakes, but focus on your future, no on your past.
132. If you don’t know where you make your mistakes, that’s your worst mistake. Not knowing where your mistakes are at. – Meek Mill
133. It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished, DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence, life in prison is a worthy substitute. – Richard Cohen
134. But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man. – LeBron James