"A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake." (Confucius, "Lunyu" ["The Analects"], [compilation] cca. 5th century BC)
"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes." (Confucius, "Lunyu" ["The Analects"], [compilation] cca. 5th century BC)
"Strategy is different from other things in that if you mistake the Way even a little you will become bewildered and fall into bad ways." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)
"It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that. At first putting forth great effort to be sure that you have grasped the basics, then practicing so that they may come to fruition is something that will never stop for your whole lifetime. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, 'This is not enough.'" (Yamamoto Tsunetomo, "Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai", cca. 1716)
"It is said that one should not hesitate to correct himself when he has made a mistake. If he corrects himself without the least bit of delay, his mistakes will disappear." (Yamamoto Tsunetomo, "Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai", cca. 1716)
"Students mistakenly affirm their present circumstance as if it was proof of their enlightenment. Because of this, the number of those who fall into the evil group of deluded people is not small." (Torei Enji, "Shumon Mujinto Ron" ["The Inexhaustible Lamp"], cca. 1800)
"Because zazen is training to realize the One Mind of yourself, it is a mistake to set up an aim outside of yourself [...] Not setting up an aim is the true aim." (Kawajiri Hogin, "Zazen no Shokei" ["The Shortcut to Zazen"], 1904)
"They take trouble to create something called 'emptiness' which they regard as separate from their own being. They aspire to this idea of emptiness, and in addition, they try to be empty of mental activity again and again. Thus, their deluded knowledge will keep on increasing so much that it will impede their becoming empty even if they wait for one hundred years. Even if they succeed in becoming empty in this way, it will be to no avail. It is mistaken to believe that to become empty is satori. If to become empty meant satori (enlightenment), human beings would be enlightened every time they wake up in the morning because they become empty every night during their sleep." (Kawajiri Hogin, "Zazen no Shokei" ["The Shortcut to Zazen"], 1904)
"To begin with, most people who practice zazen consciously try to make themselves empty. This is a grave mistake because you have thoughts about becoming empty, and it is futile to sit however long you may try to do so. For instance, suppose there is a bowl of rice. However long you may stare at it wishing it to become empty, the rice will never disappear. And the more you think of some clever way to make it disappear, the harder will it become for you to do so. While you keep on staring at it anticipating its disappearance with increasing impatience, evening will come. On the contrary, however, if you eat the rice right away according to the Dharma instead of wondering whether you should get rid of it or not, it will disappear as quickly as you wish. The same is true of zazen. As long as you are conscious of your wish to be empty, you will never succeed in becoming empty." (Kawajiri Hogin, "Zazen no Shokei" ["The Shortcut to Zazen"], 1904)
"Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes." (Elbert G Hubbard, "The Roycraft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams", 1923)
"God alone fully understands what each one of us needs; we make mistakes continually and pray for things which would be harmful to us if we received them. Afterwards we see our mistakes and realize that God is good and wise in not giving us these things, even though we plead ever so earnestly for them." (Ole Hallesby, "Fra bønnens verden" ["Prayer"], 1931)
"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Teachings of Don Juan", 1968)
"Aikido, though praised as a healthful system of self-defense techniques, would be nothing apart from the laws of the great universe. The martial way begins and ends with courtesy, itself an attitude of thankfulness to and reverence for nature. To be mistaken on this basic point is to make of the martial arts no more than weapons of injury and death." (Koichi Tohei, "Book of Ki: Co-ordinating Mind and Body in Daily Life", 1976)
"You must learn to allow patience and stillness to take over from anxiety and frantic activity for the sake of doing something, Between martial artists of the first rank, there is room for only one mistake. Before an exchange of blows, several minutes may be spent in controlled patience and planning while each man respectfully observes his opponent, studying his position or stance, watching, getting ideas, and charging his energy. When one man thinks he is going to attack, his opponent may quickly change his stance. If he has overreacted, his opponent makes a note of it. This is a weakness which he will later attempt to use to his advantage." (Jim Lau) [in Joe Hyams's, "Zen in the Martial Arts", 1979]
"Since we have no systematic way to avoid all the inconsistencies of commonsense logic, each person must find his own way by building a private collection of 'cognitive censors' to suppress the kinds of mistakes he has discovered in the past." (Marvin Minsky, "Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious", 1980)
"Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary." (Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune", 1985)
"The mistake is that we expect to find happiness outside our- selves, failing to realise that it can only come from within." (Akong Tulku Rinpoche, "Taming the Tiger: Tibetan Teachings for Improving Daily Life", 1987)
"This is the most important thing the humans have taught me. The thing they're teaching us right now. You see, they are all strangers to each other. They live out their entire lives, never truly understanding one another, only making guesses, making mistakes, distorting, deceiving, misunderstanding each other. And yet, though they're permanently strangers, they choose sometimes to trust each other, care for each other so completely that they gladly die to let the other live - that they gladly change themselves to make the other person happy.” (Orson Scott Card, "The Abyss", 1989)
"Most people are searching for happiness. They're looking for it. They're trying to find it in someone or something outside of themselves. That's a fundamental mistake. Happiness is something that you are, and it comes from the way you think." (Wayne Dyer, "Staying on the Path: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition", 2009)
"Another attitude to karma is that it is connected with rebirth, life after death - which is pure blind faith. That approach brings a certain amount of psychological comfort: this is not the only life, but there are a lot more to come; other situations will come up so you don’t have to feel fatalistic any more. That kind of attitude to karma is not dealing with the root of the karmic situation but is purely trying to play games with it or else trying to use karma as a comforter. It is based on distrust in oneself. Knowing that you are making mistakes, you think that even if you do make mistakes, you can afford to correct them, because you have a long, long time, endless time to do so." (Chögyam Trungpa, "Transcending Madness The Experience of the Six Bardos", 2010)
"Don't mistake a solution method for a problem definition - especially if it’s your own solution method." (Donald C Gause & Gerald M Weinberg, "Are Your Lights On?", 2011)
"We mistakenly believe that our welfare, our wellbeing, is utterly independent from the well-being of others. Based on that, we have decided my welfare alone is important and the welfare of others is unimportant." (Gyalwa Karmapa, 2013)
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