Retract Quotes
I've always resented the word maturity, primarily, I think, because it is most often used as a club. If you do something that someone doesn't like, you lack maturity, regardless of the actual merits of your action. Too, it seems to me that what is most often called maturity is nothing more than disengagement from life. If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn't, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those "matureā people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures. This has never appealed to me and that is another reason I could never accept the common image of maturity that was presented to me.
Alexei Panshin
I was obliged to retract, like a good Catholic, this opinion of mine; and as a punishment my dialogue was prohibited; and after five months being dismissed from Rome (at the time that the city of Florence was infected with plague), the habitation which with generous pity was assigned to me, was that of the dearest friend I had in Siena, Monsignor the Archbishop Piccolomini, whose most agreeable conversation I enjoyed with such quite and satisfaction of mind, that having there resumed my studies, I discovered and demonstrated a great number on the mechanical conclusions on the resistance of solids ... after about five months, the pestilence having ceased, the confinement of that house was changed by His Holiness for the freedom of the country so agreeable to me, whence I returned to the villa of Bellosguardo, and afterwards to Arcetri, where I still breathe salubrious air near my dear native-country Florence. Stay sane.
Galileo Galilei
In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.
David Hume