Quotes About Fallibility

No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.

Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.

I thought of you as a god, but now I see that you are nothing but a man with a man's weaknesses.

I like people that are real people. Real people are broad; they make mistakes.

We have this real problem as human beings to put people on pedestals - with celebrities, with historical figures - and we forget they're humans just like us.

Governments are not always right.

I truly believed that other people in my position didn't make mistakes; I couldn't see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.

You build a tower then you also build the chance it will fall. To think of life as a foolproof is a falacy of fools, he thought. Things happen, he believed, and there's nothing you can do to keep them from occuring.

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

It's fascinating and quite sad that we live in a time where the media is salivating to take down anyone considered to be "best in class." Culture seems to lift them onto a pedestal of perfection only to hope they come crashing down. Whether it's an athlete, a CEO, or a money manager, any false move or seemingly slight crack in the armor is exploited to the fullest. Stone them in the town square of television and the internet.

the more sure I am that I'm right, the more likely I will actually be mistaken. My need to be right makes it more likely that I will be wrong! Likewise, the more sure I am that I am mistreated, the more likely I am to miss ways that I am mistreating others myself. My need for justification obscures the truth.

Be warned my son, no man is free from error, but the wise and prudent man, When he has fallen into evil courses Does not persist but tries to find amendment It is the stubborn man who is the fool

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility.

The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd.

Although every man necessarily believes that every particular opinion which he holds is true (for to believe any opinion is not true, is the same thing as not to hold it); yet can no man be assured that all his own opinions, taken together, are true. Nay, every thinking man is assured they are not, to be ignorant of many things, and to mistake in some, is the necessary condition of humanity.

For neither love, nor the "unction of the Holy One," makes us infallible: therefore, through unavoidable defect of understanding, we cannot but mistake in many things.

Even the best of men, if left to themselves, will err in judgment.

Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers—danger, death, and live ammunition

Try not to forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.

One of the things Maxwell learned from his reading was the fallibility of men's efforts to understand the world. All of the great scientists had made mistakes. He was acutely aware of his own tendency to make errors in calculation.

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

No one can be right all of the time, but it helps to be right most of the time.