Learning From Error Quotes & Sayings

We have all learned everything we know physically - from walking to running a marathon - by trial and error, so there's no reason to become our own worst enemies when we suffer a setback. From time to time everyone falls short of their goals. It's an illusion to believe that champions succeed because they do everything perfectly. You can be certain that every archer who hits the bull's-eye has also missed the bull's-eye a thousand times while learning the skill. — Amby Burfoot

The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent. — Werner Heisenberg

That's the thing with the young these days, isn't it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short. — Nick Hornby

That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! ...
[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism ... because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers. — Primo Levi

The method of learning by trial and error - of learning from our mistakes - seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practised by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees or by men of science. — Karl R. Popper

This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. — Thomas Jefferson

The Duke would not pay for the works. He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors
and learning from them
a man cannot find the truth. — Christopher Peter Grey

I'm more afraid of success than failure. Success makes us so sure of ourselves that we do not analyze the factors that lead us to our success. Instead, in failure there's an error that lurks that makes us reflect and in that process there is learning and that makes us better — Jorge Valdano

But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the reliability of our knowledge. — Carl Sagan

Be in beta. Do things badly. Abandon perfectionism. Following this advice can seem nearly impossible when pitted against our identity. But when we allow ourselves to go into the rapid iteration of trial and error, like a child learning to walk, the feel-good neurological response just may charm away the snake of a strangling ego. — Whitney Johnson

Unfortunately, I also found out the hard way in my youth. But I guess that's how most learning is done, isn't it? — Karen Ann Wirtz

As soon as error is corrected, it is important that the error be forgotten and only the successful attempts be remembered. Errors, mistakes, and humiliations are all necessary steps in the learning process. Once they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we constantly dwell upon the errors, then the error or failure becomes the goal. — Vince Lombardi

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. — Alan Perlis

We have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they're workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we're on the right track. — Orson Scott Card

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence. — Orson Scott Card

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

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that - the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.
[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957] — William Faulkner

I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people. And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I think Charles Dickens got it quite right. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men ... — Francis Bacon

I would not have you for to think that I am such a Fool, To write against Learning, as such, or to cry down a School. Still, it would always be an error to count School Learning best. — Jill Lepore

I don't have the educated knowledge of what textures, colors, shapes and spaces need to be put together to make something just right. I'm learning it by trial and error, which is something that's slow going. — Evangeline Lilly

A wise person makes one error,
and learns ten lessons.
He makes two errors,
and learns twenty lessons.
He makes three errors,
and learns thirty lessons.
He makes few errors,
and learns countless lessons. — Matshona Dhliwayo

In spite of some bad experiences, I'm a firm believer in the trial and error method of learning. — Andy Rooney

The French word for wanderlust or wandering is 'errance.' The etymology is the same as 'error.' So to wander is to make mistakes. In other words, to make mistakes, to make errors is sort of the idea of learning through trial and error, allowing the mistakes to be part of the process. — Robyn Davidson

The universe is a self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial-and-error learning, participatory, interactive, non-locally interconnected and evolving system. — Edgar Mitchell

I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. — Jonas Salk

In half a century of challenge and learning and trial-and-error, each of us had struggled from hard times to a present lovely beyond our dreams. — Richard Bach

In rural North Carolina, you can get lots of great advice about how to clean and quarter a deer carcass, but we didn't really have anyone to ask for video advice, so we just kept learning through trial and error. — Rhett McLaughlin

Learning to trust yourself means focusing on the good you are, the good you have, and the good you desire so that the truth can heal all error thought and allow you to see the blessing hidden in all that you have been through, gone through, and grown through. — Iyanla Vanzant

Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even our humiliations, were necessary steps in the learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end - and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we consciously dwell on the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it, then - unwittingly - the error or failure itself becomes the "goal" that is consciously held in imagination and memory. — Maxwell Maltz

No one is exempt from the rule that learning occurs through recognition of error. — Alexander Lowen

Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too. — Albert J. Nock

Decision-making compresses trial-and-error learning experiences into an instantaneous mental evaluation about what the consequence of a particular action will be for a given situation. It requires the on-line integration of information from diverse sources: perceptual information about the stimulus and situation, relevant facts and experiences stored in memory, feedback from emotional systems and the physiological consequences of emotional arousal, expectations about the consequences of different courses of action, and the like. This sort of integrative processing, as we've seen is the business of working memory circuits in the prefrontal cortex. In chapters 7 and 8 , we discussed the role of the prefrontal cortex in working memory and considered the contribution of the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex. Here, we will focus on two of the subareas of the medial prefrontal cortex in light of their relation to the motive circuits outlined above. — Joseph E. Ledoux

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of which is the error of blaming it on the computer. — Tom Gilb

I have read the bible, seen its errors and perfections, but the bits of lie contained therein has contaminated the truth. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The philosopher and historian George Santayana once remarked that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. A perusal of some of the essays will reveal that this is not always true. In some cases psychologists have known about mistakes of the past and sought to repeat them. But the recurrence can sometimes be fruitful: going round in circles can be a good thing, provided the circle is large that when one returns to the task one sees it in a new light and the error brings new insights. — Noel Sheehy

Mistakes should be examined, learned from, and discarded; not dwelled upon and stored. — Tim Fargo

We seldom make logical mistakes, but often have mistaken logics. — Raheel Farooq

Error is the school we learn in. — Marty Rubin

In all things in this life, we are told "It's okay if you don't make it the first time!", "It's fine if you don't get it right the first time, just try again and again!" We are told this in learning how to ride a bike, in learning how to bake a cake, in solving our math equations ... in everything. Except marriage. Why are we all expected to get such an enormous and weighty thing right, the very first time, and if we don't we're considered as failures? I beg to differ! This is a stupidity! — C. JoyBell C.

More often than not, the belief that you are bad contributes to the "bad" behavior. Change and learning occur most readily when you (a) recognize that an error has occurred and (b) develop a strategy for correcting the problem. An attitude of self-love and relaxation facilitates this, whereas guilt often interferes. — David D. Burns

I think of the universe as the body of God, and the creative capability we see and can exhibit as the mind of God. I will use this phrase to describe our system, that it's a creative, intelligent, self-organizing, learning trial-and-error, interactive, non-locally interconnected evolutionary system. — Edgar Mitchell