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No matter how intelligent we are, what we know or how successful and popular we are, being wrong and making mistakes is inevitable. The ability to be open to being wrong and acknowledge our mistakes makes us better people in many different ways. These quotes shares wisdom and thought-provoking ideas on the different aspects of being wrong including certainty and doubt, intelligence, changing your mind, critical thinking and making mistakes.
Quotes On Certainty and Doubt
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” ― Voltaire
“The only certainty is that nothing is certain.” ― Plinty the Elder
“Ignorance is rooted in certainty.” ― Bryant McGill
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people are so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell
“Certainty is the closing of the mind. To create something new, you must have doubt.” ― Milton Glaser
“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” ― H. L. Mencken
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” ― Leo Tolstoy
“Doubt is a skill. Credulity by contrast, appears to be something very like an instinct.” ― Kathryn Schultz
Quotes On Changing Your Mind
“Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.” ― J.K. Galbraith
“Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ― George Bernard Shaw
“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?”―
“I feel I change my mind all the time. And I sort of feel that’s your responsibility as a person, as a human being – to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking.” ―
“Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.” — Paul Auster
“If you can’t change your mind, you are not using it.” — Unknown
“If you never change your mind, why have one?” ― Edward de Bono
Quotes On Intelligence
“Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.” ― Socrates (not verifiable)
“The wisest of people in this world are those that admit when they are wrong.” ― Unknown
“An intelligent person may be wrong sometimes, but a fool is never wrong.” ―Herbert M. Shelton
“Even the most intelligent man in the world can be wrong sometimes.” ― The Sicilian by Mario Puzo
“Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.” ― Bertolt Brecht
We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose. ― Will Cuppy
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is coordinated and used. ” ― Carl Sagan
Quotes On Critical Thinking
“You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.” ― Jonathan Swift
“Don’t believe everything you think.” ― Unknown
“A rigid mind is very sure but often wrong. A flexible mind is generally unsure but often right.” ― Vanda Scaravelli
“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” ― Thomas Jefferson
“Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think.” ― Albert Einstein
“The beauty of science is that it does not claim to know the answers before it asks the questions. There is nothing wrong with not knowing. It means there is more to learn, and as I have said before, ignorance bothers me far less than the illusion of knowledge.” ― Lawrence Krauss
“The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.” ― Marcus Aurelius
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ― Aristotle (attributed to but simplified/debatable)
Quotes On Making Mistakes
“Most people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.” ― Unknown
“it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are.” ― Kathryn Schultz
“It’s not how we make mistakes, but how we correct them that defines us.” ― Rachel Wolchin
“To live a creative life we must first lose the fear of being wrong.” ―
“If I’m wrong, educate me. Don’t belittle me.” ― Unknown
“There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.” ― John Maynard Keynes
“To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.” ― Kathryn Schultz
Why We Should Embrace Being Wrong