Quotes & Sayings About Admitting Wrong

If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong. It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of "flip-flopping" when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future. — Brian Eno

Doesn't matter," he said solemnly. "Men as a species are wrong. We're better off admitting it up front, taking our punishment and then hoping for good makeup sex. — Maya Banks

I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world's birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: 'What did you expect the Moon to be, square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can't for the life of me understand. What's wrong with admitting that we don't know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile? — Carl Sagan

Consistency can be a trap, especially if it leads to being consistently wrong rather than to stopping, admitting your mistake, and changing course. — Jane Fonda

I personally think that if you deny something or if you hide something you're inadvertently admitting it's wrong. — Amber Heard

If we want to set and enforce a limit on immigration, we have to be willing to say no to would-be immigrants who look a lot like our own ancestors, not because there's anything wrong with them, but simply because admitting them would exceed our legal limit. — Jan C. Ting

It's easier to say, "I don't remember" when you're wrong. — Anthony Liccione

One problem with making moral compromises is that doing the right thing becomes increasingly difficult: it requires admitting that one's earlier acts were wrong. In effect, to get clean, one must first get dirtier, a step that few proved willing to take. — Dan McMillan

Maybe he was wrong, he sometimes thought. Maybe it would be nice to confess to someone that most of the time he could barely relate to what was being discussed, that he couldn't participate in everyone else's shared language of childhood pratfalls and frustrations. But then he would stop himself, for admitting ignorance of that language would mean having to explain the one he did speak. Although — Hanya Yanagihara

That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes
the legal subordination of one sex to the other
is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. — John Stuart Mill

It's been said that I have a problem admitting when I'm wrong. The main reason is because I never am. — Shamara Ray

It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we'd be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That's where people got into trouble. — Jennifer Echols

Because prayer is the best way to set a wrong thing right again. Admitting I don't have the answers. Asking the One who does for a bit of clarity. Putting myself back in my proper place in the universe. — Rachel Heffington

I'm highly aware that some impulses are harder to ignore than others. I'm aware that fear of consequences causes us to guard our secrets. But it's our actions when faced with temptation that define who we are. It's our courage in admitting what we've done wrong that makes us forgivable. — Gena Showalter

Today you are encouraged to accept your failures. When you are willing to fail miserably, you are able to achieve greatly. Admitting your mistakes and weaknesses doesn't diminish your strength, it shows your courage and maturity. Sometimes you just need to be quiet, swallow your pride and accept you were wrong. It's not about giving up, it's about growing up. — John Geiger

I would advise women not to be shy about admitting they've had Botox - it just shows you want to look your best, and there's nothing wrong with that. — Trinny Woodall

Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?'
He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.
'No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no selfdoubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right, that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next. — Karen Maitland

I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it; also realizing it. Most lawyers are very successful, and they think that because they're making money and people think well of them, they must be doing everything right. — Alan Dershowitz

Maybe that is what growing up was all about. It was about changing your mind. Opening it right up. Admitting to yourself that you were wrong about stuff. — Matt Haig

I will never have greater respect than for the man that realizes he was wrong and graciously admits it without a single excuse. — Dan Pearce

Well, it's New Year's now but I don't feel that way anymore. I wonder if you do either. Something's happening to me. It's like I'm shrinking smaller and smaller and I can't stp it. There's just os much wrong that I can't imagine the shame in admitting even the tiniest part of it. When you left it was like there was this huge gap to fill, but instead of spreading wide enough to do it I just fell right in, and I'm still falling. Like I'm half-asleep, and I can't wake up, can't wake up ... — Sarah Dessen

If he's not going to apologize, I'm not going to be more than barely civil. I realize he is a boy and predisposed to abhor admitting he's wrong. He, however, has given me no reason to stick my neck out. — Tera Lynn Childs

It's difficult admitting you're wrong. Even more difficult admitting it when you have scoffed and otherwise ridiculed the truth with blind, unremitting determination, so blithely confident in your own infallibility. But then one day
or one night
the truth is put into your hands, and you realize those stories and songs and legends told by Northern strangers are truths after all, and that no one has lied to you. — Jennifer Roberson

Sometimes I think we keep secrets for the wrong reasons. If we could instead find that right person to talk to we might find that talking about an embarrassing story or admitting our frailty might lead to a more authentic relationship with others or ourselves. — Frank Warren

My own view is simply that there are some very basic rules; very simple rules that apply to all writing in a way, which is: don't lie; if you're wrong, correct; do not misrepresent; and try and keep oneself intellectually honest - which means, as a writer, the very difficult task in public of admitting you were wrong. — Andrew Sullivan

In 1992, the federal Government actually issued more work authorizations to immigrants and temporary foreign workers than the net number of new jobs created by our economy. Something is fundamentally wrong when we have millions of American citizens and legal residents begging for jobs, and yet we are admitting thousands and thousands of immigrants a year with virtually no consideration to our employment needs or their employment skills. — Ronald Reagan

The abortion isn't what they(conservative pro-life men of 1940s) are thinking
about; they're really thinking about sex. They're really thinking
about love and reducing it to its most mechanical aspects - that is to
say, the mechanical fact of intercourse as a specific act to make
children in this world, and thinking of its use in any other way as
wrong and wicked. They are determined to reduce women's normal sexual
responses, to end them, really, when we've just had a couple of
decades of admitting them. — Grace Paley

Sometimes the hardest thing is admitting you were wrong. It's hard to say you need to be forgiven. — Jane Casey

Am I not fit to this world or people around of me not fit for me, arguable ... without proper answer. Everyone had their logic, explanations, clarifications, examples but here also not solution. But the person himself/herself at least can figure out what's right and what's wrong. Then also there is no solution until he or she admitted that he or she is wrong. Admitting own mistake is hard to find because of so called pride. It's life you have to face everything here without solution, and the last thought is, all the problems solution will be after death only. It's the fact of the life. — Nutan Bajracharya

You've always had a good grasp on what's right and wrong. You just have a hard time admitting that sometimes you choose the wrong. — Jessica Sorensen

I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way. — Matt Berninger

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

The rational approach start from the idea that everything is explainable and that mystery is in some sense the enemy. This means that it prefers pejorative, and even wrong, answers to admitting its own lack of understanding. — Jeremy Narby

The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong. — Anthony De Mello

Rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to contrary arguments and to learn from experience ... of admitting that "I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth." — Karl Popper