Blunder Quotes - page 3

How the learned fool would wonder Were he now to see his blunder, When he put his reason under The control of worldly Pride. (James Clerk Maxwell)
What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life.
Albert Einstein
Misplaced charity iz a good blunder tew make. If yu want tew git a good general idea ov a man's karakter find out from him what hiz opinion ov his nabor iz.
Josh Billings
Ninety percent of the research comes first. I mostly blunder around reading stuff and talking to smart people until an idea batters or oozes its way through to my narrative brain.
Scott Westerfeld
My approach to parenting is that everything is open - everything. I'm not very good at covert, or subtle, and I've had to learn timing. I do blunder in a bit.
Dawn French
I have made so many mistakes, and such really stupid ones, I would start blubbing away if I could remember even half of them. But do not dwell on cock-ups, I say. You don't learn by your mistakes - at least I don't - so best to blunder on making fresh ones.
Charles Saatchi
Never thought acting was something you could make a living at. It wasn't until I was in college, and got a lead in a play, that I began to realize I might just be able to blunder into this profession.
Ed Asner
I left home at 17, traveled. I got married when I was 21. That's a young age. As it turned out, things were fine, then not so fine, and then it was a blunder. That happens all the time.
Fred Couples
Non-warlike revolutionists fall into a tragic blunder when they enter into a united front with communists or near-communists.
Kirby Page
Present day statesmen are making the biggest blunder of the age if they believe that there can be any peace without equity and justice to all mankind. (Marcus Garvey)
Clausewitz to be sure, had gone out of his way to point out that armies even when commanded by Napoleon, had rarely defeated opposing armies of as much as twice their size-thus indicating a certain boundary on the influence not only of morale but also of skill in generalship. And when greatly superior forces were defeated by lesser ones, Clausewitz hinted, it was usually because of as much owing to gross incompetence on one side as to exceptional competence on the other. Let us acknowledge the genius of blunder as well as the genius of correct action! The former appeared at least as often as the latter and has had at least as much influence on history.
Bernard Brodie
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.
Lewis Thomas
The life of Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators. Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds. A hilarious blunder by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind: Under the vast vault of blue Lives the divinity clothed in hide. One turns aside to hide a smile on hearing the pedestrian interpretation given to Ravidas' poem by a Western writer: "He afterwards built a hut, set up in it an idol which he made from a hide, and applied himself to its worship."
Paramahansa Yogananda
The world was rightly horrified by America's recent blunder in bombing the Médecins sans Frontières' hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. But how many Syrian Kunduzes will result from Russian airstrikes if the Kremlin continues to favor bombs over guided missiles?
Bernard-Henri Lévy
It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor. He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, kindness, and charity. No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the reward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well meant shortcomings from heedless or stupid blunder. In one word, every commander should keep constantly before him the great truth, that to be well obeyed, he must be perfectly esteemed.
John Paul Jones
Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in it.
John Buchan
He had said from the first that the war had been a hideous blunder, and he had supported that opinion in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) ... Stop the farm-burning; it had been a great mistake and was against British ideas. (Cheers.) Recognize that they were dealing with men whose bravery and tenacity they could admire, and offer terms to the representatives of the two Republics and to the burghers who were now in arms.
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
Having condemned the policy of severity which had been adopted with the object of bringing the [Boer] war to a conclusion, he said that it might be doubted whether anything short of the restoration of the independence of the two Republics-subject of course to a measure of British control-would have the effect of inducing the Boers to lay down their arms. The passion for independence was strong; it had been the cherished ideal of those people ever since they quitted Cape Colony and won the country for themselves. Our demand for unconditional surrender was a fatal blunder.
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace.
David Hume
An ancient tradition declares that every idiot blunder we pass into law will sooner or later redound to Athens' profit. (Aristophanes)
Man's greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors.
Elbert Hubbard
To talk of prayer after admitting he professed no faith was, in my opinion, a breach of common courtesy. In this sense, he did make a social blunder, for which I think he well deserved some minor castigation.
Kenzaburō Ōe
Nor let the critic, if he find the meaning of Camoens in some instances altered, imagine that he has found a blunder in the Translator. ... It was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a translation is to see what the author exactly says; it was to give a poem that might live in the English language which was the ambition of the Translator. ... And the original is in the hands of the world.
William Julius Mickle
The one to distrust is the person who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. Either he is a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried and the trivial.
Peter Drucker