Admitting Error Quotes & Sayings

After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established
historical precedents, I must conclude that the global bankers have
only three possible cards left to play.
The first is admitting culpability and working to restore the
American economic engine to its free-market potential. History has
taught us that the ruling class rarely admits error and never concedes
power.
The second is to foment so much civil unrest and fear that the
general population will be clamoring for a global dictator who will
provide them food, shelter, and security in exchange for their individual
freedom and sovereignty. I see the emerging militancy of the
labor union movement playing right into this scenario.
The final play is global conflict where they can try and control
the outcome by means of funding both sides. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Admitting Error clears the Score, And proves you Wiser than before. — Arthur Guiterman

I will do you one last favour, in the name and memory of the figment you have replaced. I will clarify a misapprehension of yours. Circumstances did not conspire against me. I was not led into anything, nor did I fall. I chose my life and my course. I chose to do wrong in the hope that right might come of it. I regret it. I would choose differently now. But the choice was mine. Deny that, falsify it, tinsel it over with pious, pitying justification, and you deny everything I am and every scrap of what little good I have been able to do in my life. Good or bad, give me credit for what I have done. I would rather go honestly to Hell, admitting that I leaped knowingly into error and folly, than enter into the sweetest Heaven men can dream of by whining that I had been pushed. — Steven Brust

Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager. — Nancy Gibbs

In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described. — Bertrand Russell

A man can build a staunch reputation for honesty by admitting he was in error, especially when he gets caught at it. — Robert Ruark

It is all too often the case with certain types of scholars of Malay-Indonesian Islam, when dealing with Islamic texts such as the one in question in which they are confronted with a word they do not quite understand, that instead of admitting their failure to explain the word in the text as due to their own lack of understanding, they would proceed to conjure up some excuse for branding the word as an enigma, and then, because it is an enigma to them, they would proceed further to reject it with such pronouncements as: "it seems obvious that this puzzling word is due to a scribal error", so that they might suggest their own futile substitute. — Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride. — William T. Sherman

In science, an observer states his results along with the "probable error"; but who ever heard of a theologian or a politician stating the probable error in his dogmas, or even admitting that any error is conceivable? That is because in science, where we approach nearest to real knowledge, a man can safely rely on the strength of his case, whereas, where nothing is known, blatant assertion and hypnotism are the usual ways of causing others to share our beliefs. If the fundamentalist thought they had a good case against evolution, they would not make the teaching of it illegal. — Bertrand Russell