Al Franken:

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

Billy Wilder:

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

Bryant H. McGill:

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

Dan Quayle:

I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.

Denis Waitley:

The only person who never makes mistakes is the person who never does anything.

Isaac Asimov:

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Isaac Asimov:

[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Jean Rostand:

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

John Powell:

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

Mary Pickford:

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

Niels Bohr:

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Nikki Giovanni:

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.

Paul Ricoeur :

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

Richard Needham:

Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people. Difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them, learn from them. That is how they become strong.

Sigmund Freud:

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

Thomas Carlyle:

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

Thomas Jefferson:

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

Thomas Paine:

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

Tryon Edwards:

He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Virginia Satir:

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.