Being Wrong Quotes

“The best of us must sometimes eat our words.”
― J.K. Rowling

“You couldn't be old and still be wrong about as many things as she'd been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Anyone can possess, anyone can profess, but it is an altogether different thing to confess.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Aristocrats don't notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It's not vanity, you understand, it's built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff

“No one is ever a victim of life; we are all volunteering to grow.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You'll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism "thinking" (whereas it's really your ego's narcissistic reaction to the moment). You'll position things to quickly as inferior or superior, "with me" or "against me," and most of the time you'll be wrong.”
― Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

“For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us - excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over.”
― Norman Maclean

“Pride is pride not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong: To hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong; whereas pride, even when proven wrong, decides to go on being wrong.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“To make mistakes or be wrong is human. To admit those mistakes shows you have the ability to learn, and are growing wiser.”
― Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness

“There is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.”
― Edward Abbey

“And then I decided to be pro me. Be pro you to the end. No more cutting up myself and serving up myself like pieces of a pie for everyone's tasteless palates. And that doesn't mean you don't know how to say sorry; because being pro you means being pro growth and pro improvement. When I'm wrong, I know I'm wrong and I say that I'm wrong. And that's how I know I'm right!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Granted it is easy at least comparatively to find pleasure in error when there's nothing at stake. But that can't be the whole story since all of us have been known to throw tantrums over totally trivial mistakes. What makes illusions different is that for the most part we enter in them by consent. We might not know exactly how we are going to err but we know that the error is coming and we say yes to the experience anyways.


In a sense much the same thing could be said of life in general. We can't know where your next error lurks or what form it will take but we can be very sure that it is waiting for us. With illusions we look forward to this encounter since whatever minor price we paid in pride is handily outweighed by curiosity at first and by pleasure afterward. The same will not always true when we venture past these simple perceptual failures to more complex and consequential mistakes But nor is willing the embrace of error always beyond us. In fact this might be the most important thing that illusions can teach us: that is is possible at least some of the time to find in being wrong a deeper satisfaction then we would have found being right.”
― Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

“The Tudors hated to be wrong, and therefore never were.”
― Jeane Westin, His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester

“Just once I'd like to see you be wrong about something."

"Oh, I've been wrong about plenty of things," Ander murmured, pulling her toward him and draping both arms around her waist. "I just don't like to advertise the fact.”
― Claire Kent, Escorted

“Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Brilliance in a scientist does not consist in being right more often but in being wrong about more interesting topics.”
― Kent Beck

“We so want to be right and so trust that our desire to be right is something that God would surely bless. Yet the desire to be right comes with a price: the fear of being wrong. And so, in a counter-intuitive way, this focus on being right seems to be the porridge we settle for when we exchange our birthright because we're famished and fear that father won't feed us.”
― Ken Wilson, A Letter to My Congregation: An Evangelical Pastor's Path to Embracing People Who Are Gay, Lesbian and Transgender in the Company of Jesus

“Let's be honest about journalists: We find a lot of ways of being wrong.”
― E.J. Dionne Jr.

“It is not about living idyllically in our
similarities, but about living peacefully and pleasurably in
our differences.”
― Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

“We all can be wrong, some more often than others.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“I accept when I am wrong because that only makes me strong.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“There is an inexplicable sense of relief in being proven wrong, which perhaps can only be realized by either a scientist or a philosopher.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Lord is My Sheep: Gospel of Human

“To understand a phenomenon, we need to make sure we understand the shape of its curve. By assuming we know how a curve continues beyond what we see, we will draw the wrong conclusions and come up with the wrong solutions.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“I wasn't just wrong. I was wrong in such a vast and specific way that I felt like the punchline of a cruel joke.”
― Sara Gran, The Book of the Most Precious Substance

“It is okay to not know everything. It is okay to be wrong. We learn, grow, and develop from our mistakes. They become building blocks for success defined by character, humility, honesty, perseverance, integrity, hope, and most of all faith.”
― Sandra C Bibb

“we listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The High King makes a nonchalant gesture. 'Jude likes to suppose the worst of both her enemies and her allies. Her reward is occasionally being wrong about us.'

'Hard to remember an occasion of that,' I say to him under my breath.

He lifts a single brow.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable, it requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we’re losing a part of ourselves. rethinking isn’t a struggle in every part of our lives, when it comes to our obsessions, we update with fervour, we refresh our wardrobes when they go out of style, and renovate our kitchens when they’re no longer in Vogue. when it comes to our knowledge and opinions though, we tend to stick to our guns. psychologists call this ceasing and freezing. we favour the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt and we let our beliefs brittle long before our bones”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“part of the problem is cognitive laziness. some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers, we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Everyone has a right to be wrong; it is only when you were persecuting, demonizing, and hating on those who were right all along that it takes something special to forgive. This is all the more reason for humility, for being patient with those who disagree with you: because it is you who might be wrong, and later, them proven right.”
― Criss Jami