Small Mistakes Quotes & Sayings

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

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else. — Kiera Van Gelder

In a flashback, we hear Holly's mother summing up her life in a conversation with her husband, Wylie: "My life is one big mistake," she said. "No, it's not," he said. "It's a series of small mistakes. — Will Allison

It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality. — Griffin Dunne

Start in a small TV station so you can make all of your embarrassing mistakes early and in front of fewer people! — Diane Sawyer

I feel like that now: tired of the Me I've always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the same small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me. So what is stopping me from stepping outside my habitual crap?
My mind, my limited mind. — George Saunders

The defeats which many small Red areas have suffered have been due either to the absence of the requisite objective conditions or to subjective mistakes in tactics. — Mao Zedong

If once he has got the right fingering, plays in good time, with the notes fairly correct, then only pull him up about the rendering; and when he has arrived at that stage, don't let him stop for the sake of small faults, but point them out to him when he has played the piece through ... I have always adopted this plan; it soon forms musicians which, after all, is one of the first aims of art and it gives less trouble both to master and pupil. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. I will return to this idea several times in this book - it probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. — Daniel Kahneman

There's something actually more intimidating about playing a small, intimate room. Your mistakes are that much more under the microscope. — Blake Shelton

I think the more people you add on stage, the more locked it things become. Whereas fewer members on stage gets the audience to notice any small idiosyncrasy or unique moment that one of the three people onstage is having. It also means that mistakes are accentuated, but to good affect generally if you are that type of band. — Chris Cain

Remembering your mistakes more acutely than any minor success. This was the worst. The things that kept you up at night. Tip a waiter that was too small. The words that didn't fit the moment. Words that didn't come till to late. You could kill yourself in increments, punishing your spirit day after day-regret. Guilt. Not the guilt of the little girl who woke in the night embarrassed God was mad at her because she had ticked balls under her shirt, pretending to have breasts. "I even felt sexy." That was sweet, and pure, no crime at all. But the crime of obsessive replay-get rid of it, get rid of it. Who could ever have known that hardest punishments would be the ones you gave yourself? — Naomi Shihab Nye

But here's an ugly truth about typos and other small editing mistakes: They exist in traditional books, too. — Sean Platt

To have a spirit of excellence gives you the courage to accept large and small tasks and also strive to learn from our mistakes. — Euginia Herlihy

Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Pray for the love which allows you to see the good in your companion. Pray for the love that makes weaknesses and mistakes seem small. Pray for the love to make your companion's joy your own. Pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrows of your companion — Henry B. Eyring

...avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road. — Daymond John

Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right. He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made not a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity. — Nikita Khrushchev

I make small mistakes every day. But major mistakes? It doesn't seem so. I've examined my service to the Tibetan people and to humanity, and I've done as much as I can in my life. — Dalai Lama

The biggest thing, I think, is to stay healthy and make the fewest mistakes, and then you can win ... The margin of error is so small in the NFL, so if you can do those two things - keep your team healthy and make the fewest mistakes each Sunday - you have a good chance of going to the Super Bowl. — Hugh Douglas

The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential. X-rays of famous paintings reveal that even master artists sometimes made basic mid-course corrections (or deleted really dumb mistakes) by overpainting the still-wet canvas. The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about - and lots of it! — David Bayles

The only way to reduce errors by 70 percent was to make every single employee, in effect, a quality assurance auditor. Everyone had to take responsibility for catching mistakes. But most factory workers didn't know enough about the engines to identify every small defect as it occurred. The only solution, managers decided, was a massive retraining effort. Except — Charles Duhigg

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. — Helen Simonson

What makes a good judge? Confidence for one. An expert, in Shanteau's view, is someone good at convincing others he or she is an expert. Good judges may make small errors, but they will "generally avoid large mistakes." When they encounter exceptions, experts are good at making"single-case deviations in their decision patterns." Novices, meanwhile, tend to stick stubbornly to the rules, even when they are inappropriate. — Tom Vanderbilt

Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world by trial and error. Unlike other creatures we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes. — Ronald Wright

The virtue of small government is that the mistakes are small as well ... If you want to leave a nation you think is corrupt, inefficient, militaristic, oppressive, repressive, but you don't want to move to Canada or France, what do you do? Well, the way is through secession, where you could stay home and be where you want to be. — Kirkpatrick Sale

It is not important NOT to make mistakes, but the mistakes to be small — Carlos Slim

Think boldly. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't miss small details, keep your eyes open and be modest in everything except your aims. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking himself seriously. It's the only way to avoid suffering - suffering, prolonged, can be fatal. — Pedro Juan Gutierrez

In the end, it is your responsibility to read the small print, whether it is for gig contracts, record contracts, investors, management, booking agents, or anything else. You can blame everyone else for your mistakes, but when you make them, you end up being the one who has to pay. — Loren Weisman

Sometimes the smallest things are so damn unforgivable. Maybe because they aren't small - they only seem that way to someone else. You never know what someone holds scared until it's too late. — James Anderson

We never know where life is going to lead, Ethan. What so many small decisions are going to add up to. — Ali Standish

Trade small because thats when you are as bad as you are ever going to be. Learn from your mistakes. — Richard Dennis

Small mistakes tend to lead to large ones. Ours is a lifetime appoinment, and all you have is your reputation. Once it's gone, it doesn't comeback. — David Baldacci

Mistakes are normal and human. Make them small, accept them, correct them, and forget them. — Carlos Slim

People make mistakes all the time. Small ones, like you get in the wrong checkout line. The one with the lady with a hundred coupons and a checkbook.

Sometimes you make medium-sized ones. You go to medical school instead of pursuing you passion.

Sometimes you make big ones.

You give up. — Nicola Yoon

But he had seen so little of life and the world himself, that he could scarcely help being one-sided and narrow-minded; and as he would not avail himself of his father's wider knowledge, what remained but to make mistakes? So, priding himself on an inflexible firmness in matters of "principle," however small, he confounded together things indifferent and important; did even wise ones foolishly; and attempted others which were neither wise, nor worth a hundredth part of the offence they created. "We — Mrs. Alfred Gatty

Learning to stop sweating the small stuff involves deciding what things to engage in and what things to ignore. From a certain perspective, life can be described as a series of mistakes, one right after another with a little space in between. — Richard Carlson

Take the path less traveled and learn from your mistakes. Don't just let life happen around you; control your future. Learn to ask questions, set small goals, and dream of big ones. Absorb any criticism and let it fuel you. Convince others that you are worthy of your dream, and show them that you are willing to put up a damn good fight for it. — Matthew T. Cross

[When explaining over reactions to small mistakes] I get swallowed up in the moment, and I can't tell the right response from the wrong response. All I know is that I have to get out of the situation as soon as I can, so I don't drown. To get away, I'll do anything. Crying, screaming and throwing things, hitting out even ... Finally, finally, I'll calm down and come back to myself. Then I see no sign of the tsunami attack
only the wreckage I've made. And when I see that, I hate myself. I just hate myself. — Naoki Higashida

Being rude to someone loving all the time can make your loving behavior same as your rude one for that person. So you should not always be rude in small mistakes — Pawan Mehra

Doctors are human animals. They want to be loved, they are tribal, they instinctually favor stories over scientific evidence, they make mistakes, and even small gifts make them susceptible to being biased. — Alice Dreger

The way I figure it, life's the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices. — Lauren Oliver

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy. — Marshall McLuhan

She looked around the table and saw each of them as they looked that night ... All of them in their last hours of making mistakes with small prices. — Carol Anshaw

Pundits, opponents, and disillusioned supporters would blame Obama for squandering the promise of his administration. Certainly he and his administration made their share of mistakes. But it is hard to think of another president who had to face the kind of guerrilla warfare waged against him almost as soon as he took office. A small number of people with massive resources orchestrated, manipulated, and exploited the economic unrest for their own purposes. They used tax-deductible donations to fund a movement to slash taxes on the rich and cut regulations on their own businesses. While they paid focus groups and seasoned operatives to frame these self-serving policies as matters of dire public interest, they hid their roles behind laws meant to protect the anonymity of philanthropists, leaving more folksy figures like Santelli to carry the message. — Jane Mayer

When you're more experienced and have been in the car crash a million times, and have made mistakes and learned from them, everything slows down and something as small as shoes can stand out. — Mark Owen

We all make mistakes. Big and small. But you don't have to let them define you forever. — Debbie Macomber

The discipline of programming is most like sorcery. Both use precise language to instruct inanimate objects to do our bidding. Small mistakes in programs or spells can lead to completely unforseen behavior: e.g., see the story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Neither study is easy: " ... her [Galinda's] early appetite for sorcery had waned once she'd heard what a grind it was to learn spells and, worse, to understand them." from the book "Wicked" by G. Maguire. — Richard E. Pattis

Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Some political leaders in the world make big mistakes but they never resign; some make a small mistake but they immediately resign! What makes a political leader to resign or not to resign has something to do with having an honour or not! Those who have honour always choose the honourable way: Resignation! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner's money or assets you've learned and you don't make bigger mistakes. Try to go as far as you can without anybody else's help first. — Daymond John

The right way to build a company is to experiment in lots of small ways, so that you have plenty of room to make mistakes and change strategies. — Vinod Khosla

I think of what it means to be a teenager in America, necessarily pushing boundaries, making expected mistakes. Here there is no margin for error: a mistake, no matter how insignificant, dashes any small hopes to break the cycle of poverty. Here in Kibera the world is relentless and unforgiving. — Jessica Posner

Keep your eyes open. Make mistakes - because you will anyway - and remember that small stuff stinks but that it's also essential. — Adam Sadowsky

I watched her carve her mistakes in stone, and they arranged themselves around her. They became a maze with walls that reached the sky. Because she learned from so few of them, she was lost. Because she didn't have faith in anything, she didn't try to find a way out. I watched her try to face her fears alone, too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to admit she was afraid, too small to fight them, too tired to fly away. — Amy Zhang

Small mistakes, the lack of care, little accidents, and somewhere a tipping point is passed and things go badly wrong. Expedition history brims with tragedies built out of incremental missteps. — Alan S. Kesselheim

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. And I'm really sensitive, so I take even small mistakes as huge ones. — John Krasinski

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

A man and his wife, each in a different small plane, were out enjoying a flight, when the husband committed a flight error. He was able to recover, but his wife who was following him, crashed and was killed. The husband was distraught, blaming himself for the accident. One day when pleading with the Lord for forgiveness, he heard a voice saying "Jesus died, even for dumb mistakes." — Truman G. Madsen

Let no one read my principles who is not a mathematician," he famously declared (less famous is the fact that the principles he was referring to were his theories of how the aortic pulmonary valve worked). Ironically, he himself was a poor mathematician, often making simple mistakes. In one of his notes he counted up his growing library: "25 small books, 2 larger books, 16 still larger, 6 bound in vellum, 1 book with green chamois cover." This reckoning (with its charmingly haphazard system of classification) adds up to fifty, but Leonardo reached a different sum: "Total: 48," he confidently declared. — Ross King

I know something of shame [ ... ] How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. [ ... ] I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time. — Helen Simonson

The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity. — Christopher Alexander

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do. — Patrick Rothfuss

The banking business is no favorite of ours. When assets are twenty times equity - a common ratio in this industry - mistakes that involve only a small portion of assets can destroy a major portion of equity. And mistakes have been the rule rather than the exception at many major banks. — Warren Buffett

From small mistakes come great catastrophes; — Justin Cronin

The things that I've learned is, try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner's money or assets, you've learned, and you don't make bigger mistakes. — Daymond John

Be present. Make love. Make tea. Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation. Buy a plant, water it. Make your bed. Make some one else's bed. Have a smart mouth and quick wit. Run. Make art. Create. Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain. Take chances. Ask questions. Make mistakes. Learn. Know your worth. Love fiercely. Forgive quickly. Let go of what doesn't make you happy. Grow. — Paulo Coelho