Quotes & Sayings About Mistakes And Choices

you may be wrong to be right in the wrong direction, but, what is the wrong direction? — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

She didn't want to. She loved you. She loves you now. Yes, she hurt you and she made a terrible mistake in leaving you. But your father made mistakes, too, and you will, as well. We all make bad choices - decisions that would better be left to rot in the bottom of the barrel. But we can't undo them. We can only move forward. — Tracie Peterson

Life turns on small choices.
A last-minute decision to take a shortcut over a snowy pass.
A shrugging dismissal of the odd-looking man in the long coat standing off to one side.
A decision to postpone a physical exam till a less busy time.
A word spoken with the best intentions.
Looking back, after the lives are destroyed, the blood spilt, the families shattered, and even the courses of nations changed forever, the mistakes that started the doomsday clock ticking down often seem minor, even innocent-even virtuous. So easy to make.
David Eller would give anything-no, everything-to go back and undo those mistakes. But life does not give us that chance. Like everyone else, he has no choice but to dangle from the hand of that clock, trying in vain to pull them backward as they tick inexorably toward zero. — William Carmichael

It was possible, he understood, for a person's life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more mistake in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas, and for whatever reason, made them your own. — Justin Cronin

Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, "If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been." Then I will remind myself that I cannot. — John S. Hall

Actors always want to know how I come up with interesting and creative takes on characters, characters that aren't like me as I appear in daily life and that aren't like each other. It's simple: I let the lines and images connect with my imagination. I don't worry about consistency; I let myself respond moment by moment, piecemeal, to the character's dialogue and actions. Then I let my responses take me wherever they go, making mistakes and discarding them until choices start repeating themselves on their own no matter how arbitrary they seem at first. Then I know I'm on to something. But I don't try to put the character together. I leave it in pieces. The script and story put the character together so my moment by moment performance seems like a creative take on the whole character. — Harold Guskin

No one makes all good choices, and everyone makes mistakes. — Penny Reid

Sometimes, until you do what you shouldn't have done, you least remember what you should have done — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

So, your saying choices and destiny shape the course of our lives? I think so, yes. It's just easier to blame fate for all of the mistakes. — Gena Showalter

We are all capable of regulating how we think and feel. It just boils down to owning that power. — Carlos Wallace

For every decision a 'man' makes, he makes it with the best of the depth of knowledge he possess at that particular instant and the quality of experiences he's passed through. It's not an excuse though for mediocrity, but an avenue to learn, rise, and conquer your inefficient self. By inference, beyond an extreme line, there might not necessarily be a qualification of a choice as wrong or right, but an avenue to grow depending on how the intricacies of such a choice and its consequences are handled. — Ufuoma Apoki

I put God first, and strive to do my best by being a loving human being, recognizing that sometimes I make mistakes and bad choices. — Common

avoid solving and resist rescuing, even when they make minor mistakes or not-so-great choices. — Daniel J. Siegel

I take this art very seriously and passionately. I love what I do. You can't help but grow. That's not to say you don't make mistakes or make bad choices, but that's part of the art. Painters paint bad paintings. — Christopher Meloni

It seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices. [ ... ] They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems. [ ... ] A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors. [ ... ] Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it's too late to make corrections. — Frank Herbert

Love allows freedom for the beloved, even the freedom to leave. It surely grants the freedom to make mistakes, or to make decisions that bring out challenging situations. Challenges are part of this life simulation game after all. Love doesn't judge the person by their choices and deeds. Love says: "I trust and respect that you will eventually find your path on your own, whatever it may be. You don't need to agree with me - I love your 'yes' and I love your 'no.' I may get upset at you, but I still love you. You use your free will to do what you believe to be right. You live your life, with your choices and their results. It's just an additional honor and fun to have you in my life while we both enjoy it. — Akemi G

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It's all those things that add up to the person you become. — Angelina Jolie

No more excuses. I can't blame anything on my parents. I'm responsible for my mistakes and my choices. — Brad Pitt

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and overcommunicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it's how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe. — Howard Schultz

Life is funny. I'd applied to the wrong graduate program, but that eventually led me to the right grad program. I'd taken what I thought was the wrong undergraduate major, and that was the thing that set me apart and allowed me to find my niche. I don't know if there are any lessons to take from that except to realize that the things you think are mistakes may turn out not to be mistakes. I realized wherever you are, if you make the most of what you've got, you can find a way to keep moving forward. — Mike Massimino

Why are we asked to make the most important decisions of our lives when we are so young, and so prone to mistakes? — Samuel Park

Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way. — Lewis Thomas

People make mistakes; they do the wrong things. Sometimes they're annoying. Sometimes they're awful. (That's true for me, too, by the way.)
So how do you know when it's time to give up? And do you know when to hang in there? I guess you don't really. You just make your choices and hope for the best. — Lisa Papademetriou

Women have the stress of being beautiful, of age and youth. Men don't have all that. And with women, that stress causes a lot of mistakes and bad choices - a lot of not being their true self. — Miuccia Prada

Blaze your own trail in life. Make your own choices and make your own mistakes. It's the only way you'll find your own happiness, not someone else's. — M. Leighton

You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won't be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don't need to tell you that you can do this-you know you can. — Sarah J. Maas

He pauses, swipes a matchstick on a column. It bursts into flame. "I tell you, you must take risks in my studio." He finds a cigarette behind his ear and lights it. "I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way." An affirmative murmur. "I say this, yes, but I still see so many of you afraid to cut in." He begins to pace, slowly like a wolf, which is definitely his mirror animal. "I see what you are doing. When you leave yesterday, I go from work to work. You feel like Rambo maybe with the drills, the saws. You make lots of noise, lots of dust, but very few of you have found even this much" - he pinches two fingers together - "of your sculptures. Today this changes." He walks over to a short blond-haired girl. "May I, Melinda?" "Please, — Jandy Nelson

You both have grown up feeling as if you weren't properly loved by those who should have loved you the most. People make mistakes. They make wrong choices at the worst moments. Never at any time were you not loved
Know this. Cherish this. Love one another and be courageous enough to live your life and love more. Don't let fear trap you. — Katie McGarry

There are mistakes, and then there are choices. — Jenny B. Jones

These days, startling though the thought is, we control our own legacy. We're not passive, we're not helpless. We're earth-movers. We can become Earth-restorers and Earth-guardians. We still have time and talent, and we have a great many choices. As I said at the beginning of this mental caravan, our mistakes are legion, but our imagination is immeasurable. — Diane Ackerman

We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society - not a society in which the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State. — Margaret Thatcher

I want the life I'm meant to have, Etta. It's as simple as that. My father always says that the way to truly live is to do so without expectation or fear hanging over you, affecting your choices - and that's bloody hard to do with you travelers coming and going. I want to know you the way you know me one day. I want to play my violin, make mistakes, fall in love, live in as many different cities as I can. Would you really take that from me? — Alexandra Bracken

Well - I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you - wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking 'what if,' 'what if.' 'Life is cruel.' 'I wish I had died instead of.' Well - think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no - hang on - this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way? — Donna Tartt

Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain ... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it. — Kevyn Aucoin

I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there. — David Levithan

It's hard to explain. I mean ... I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. When we were young, things were so much simpler ... You have to understand that I'm not the girl I used to be. I'm a wide and a mother now, and like everyone else I am not perfect. I struggle with the choices I've made and I make mistakes, and half the time I wonder who I really am or what I'm doing or whether my life means anything at all. I'm not special at all, and you need to know that. You have to understand that I'm just ... ordinary. — Nicholas Sparks

If I were your enemy, I'd constantly remind you of your past mistakes and poor choices. I'd want to keep you burdened by shame and guilt, in hopes that you'll feel incapacitated by your many failings and see no point in even trying again. I'd work to convince you that you've had your chance and blown it - that your God may be able to forgive some people for some things, but not you . . . not for this. — Priscilla Shirer

Remember there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible — Cherie Carter-Scott

We have a hope of succeeding if we learn from our past mistakes and pull together to make the hard choices. — Carl Levin

The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made. — Frank Herbert

People screw up. People screw up a lot. We allow our own selfishness to overpower us at times. It happens. But you can't allow that to tear you down. You can't keep dwelling on your past choices, and your past actions, or else you'll never learn from them. — Nicole Sobon

What you did in the past is your business. Those were your choices - your mistakes - if you even believe they were mistakes. Stop caring what anyone thinks and live your life the way you want to live it. — Laura Wright

You have to understand that I'm not the girl I used to be," she said. "I'm a wife and a mother now, and like everyone else I'm not perfect. I struggle with the choices I've made and I make mistakes, and half the time I wonder who I really am or what I'm doing or whether my life means anything at all. I'm not special at all, Dawson, and you need to know that. You have to understand that I'm just ... ordinary." "You're not ordinary." Her look was pained but unflinching. "I know — Nicholas Sparks

Sometimes our wants or needs have nothing to do with being ungrateful and everything to do with making a mistake. — Shannon L. Alder

He could offer her nothing but the truth. "You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won't be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don't need to tell you that you can do this - you know you can. I wouldn't have sworn the oath to you if I didn't think you could. — Sarah J. Maas

Like all human beings, Bob [Crane] had feelings and emotions. He danced on the moon, jumped for joy, laughed in ecstasy, and leapt in triumph. He also cried in grief, mourned losses, threw his hands up to the sky in frustration, and felt desperate, scared, sad, and alone. Bob's flaws - the mistakes and bad choices he made, the most difficult moments he faced, and his descent into the jaws of a powerful addiction - were all but a part of his whole life journey. His flaws were merely the specks, like the specks on the Parthenon that comprise any person's entire time on earth... In spite of his flaws, he was a kind person, a joyful person, a talented person, a courageous person - a whole person. — Carol M. Ford

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. — Kay Hooper

Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The most difficult part of being a mother was to observe the mistakes of one's children: the foolish loves, the desperate solitude and alienation, the lack of will, the gullibility, the joyous and naive leaps into the unknown, the ignorance, the panicky choices and the utter determination. — David Bergen

Human life is a passage - it's simply a crossing to somewhere else. Most people stay on the highway, but some choose to go off-road.

Don't ever be afraid to drive off the road and into the grass. You never know what you might find there. And don't regret your choices. We all make mistakes, and sometimes they'll be huge ones. But don't despair. In the long run you'll travel so far down the road that you won't be able to see those mistakes behind you. Just put one foot in front of the other, and you'll do just fine. — Marie Simas

In real markets, agents make bad choices. They are often ignorant, misinformed, and irrational. Yet, markets tend to punish agents for making bad choices, and they tend to learn from their mistakes. For instance, if you fail to pay your bills, your credit rating declines and you have a harder time getting loans. If you fail to do research and buy an unreliable car, you suffer from repair bills. In contrast, when people in government make bad choices, the political process almost never punishes them. Studies show that voters are terrible at retrospective voting - they do not know whom to blame for bad government - and so politicians are not punished for making bad choices. — Jason Brennan

I hated that I felt jealous. Hated it. It's not like I'd been on my own waiting for him, just like he hadn't been waiting alone for me. We had lived, for two years. Made choices and mistakes, had good days and bad days. — Megan Miranda

I have to live and make my own choices, my own mistakes. You have to let me be me, even if i suck at it sometimes. - Adria — J.A. Redmerski

When you write the script, you're home in a room by yourself, and you're writing, and there's no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices. — Woody Allen

We live in a reputation economy. People are judged based on their online visible choices, behaviours, accomplishments and mistakes. Every comment you leave, person you connect to, photo you upload, or review you get, contributes to the permanent record of your online reputation. — Maarten Schafer

Life's the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices. Addition on top of addition. They pile up and pile up until the cost of keeping up appearances is too high and the weight is just too much. Then: collapse. — Lauren Oliver

One mistake cannot justify another. — Raheel Farooq

Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it's our will alone that leads us to one or the other. — Gregory David Roberts

I've certainly done some turkeys along the way and made some dumb choices in my career, mostly early on. I'm one of the lucky ones who got to make a lot of mistakes very early when no one was paying attention. — George Clooney

Humans are often more stupid than they realize. Because of our weaknesses are so easily exploited. Just like a child's clumsy fingers messing up the buttons on a shirt. It's easy to mock someone who buttoned his shirt wrongly. It's easy to mock someone who had buttoned wrongly yet remains oblivious to it. But there are also people who completely fail to realize that they buttoned them all wrongly. Just a moment's error, a wrong choice, traps us on the road of no return. But who can reprimand them for that? Why can't humans be lonely? Why can't we yearn for those right by our side? On such a cold lonely night, who can stand to bear it alone? Imagine the fright when we realize the severity of our mistakes. Whoever said love was a happy affair? — Yuuri Eda

Plowing through life, you're bound to run into obstructions. Some of life's trials result from mistakes and missteps, and some from poor choices. I know about that too, because I've made my share of blunders and had to face the consequences.
Other times, the unexpected lands in your hands like a wayward ball and the "trouble" coming at you is like a 250-pound linebacker blitzing straight off the edge.
— Jake Byrne

As years pass, and the abundance of the future is depleted, the crux of old mistakes and the cost of old choices are ever recalibrated. Resentment, the interest in umbrage derived from being wronged, is computed minute by minute, savagely, however you try to ignore it. — Gregory Maguire

I'm not much of a matchmaker. I think people have to make their own choices and mistakes and all that stuff. — Luke Perry

Don't just think about what you missed! Don't continue to dwell on your past mistakes. You shall also miss something in life, consciously or unconsciously! You shall never be able to do all things excellently in life though you must try to! The lesson from what you missed and its application for a better tomorrow is what matter! Move your thought! Move your body! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Parents are not the all-knowing, ideal people we would like you to think we are. We've made wrong choices before, and will again, like everyone else, .. But our mistakes are not the measure of our love for you. You are that measure, and how well you are prepared to make better choices than we have made. — John McCain

People who make mistakes are in the best position to make better choices. — Sarah Noffke

Considering the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it does, it receives scant attention from psychiatrists and psychologists. Resentment is a great rationalizer: it presents us with selected versions of our own past, so that we do not recognize our own mistakes and avoid the necessity to make painful choices. — Theodore Dalrymple

Regrets are the last words you speak to your loved ones when you die and the one thing we all fear when we live. I'd rather regret the things I've done and said than regret the things I haven't done or said. It is all the experiences and people you missed out on in life that you will feel the most regretful for in the end. God will forgive you of your mistakes, but there is nothing to forgive if you have never even tried, done or said anything that made a difference in your life or others. — Shannon L. Alder

She chose the attractive room, not noticing the cloven hoof exposed beneath the ornate curtains. That decision has surely haunted her every day since, finally catching up to her. — K. Martin Beckner

If we don't forgive ourselves for mistakes we've made-and everybody's made their choices, some worse than others-we'll never experience the good life God has in store. — Joel Osteen

Although kids are born with great courage to take control of their own lives and make decisions, they have little experience on which to base their decisions, so they often make poor choices. But they can learn from those mistakes, provided parents don't get too involved. — Foster W. Cline

Making mistakes is part of learning to choose well. No way around it. Choices are thrust upon us, and we don't always get things right. Even postponing or avoiding a decision can become a choice that carries heavy consequences. Mistakes can be painful-sometimes they cause irrevocable harm-but welcome to Earth. Poor choices are part of growing up, and part of life. You will make bad choices, and you will be affected by the poor choices of others. We must rise above such things. — Brandon Mull

The thing that I like about the way characters are written on the show these days is that nobody's perfect. Everyone has made a lot of mistakes and bad choices. — Crystal Chappell

Mistakes are a combination of your choices and has nothing to do with your capacity. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi