Mistaken Quotes - Page 17

• The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Privilege, Genius, Infirmity

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.31

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• When Ballesteros triumphed at the British Open in 1979, for his first major win, he hit so few fairways off the tee that he was often mistaken for a gallery marshall.

  Dan Jenkins

  Winning, Firsts, Gallery

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• I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God that day.

  John Proctor

  Christian, Dream, Should Have

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• We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for "productivity"

  Douglas Adams

  Technology, Thinking, Should Have

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• In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Science, Theoretical Physics

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987.

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• It is obvious that the great majority of humans throughout history have had grossly, even ridiculously, unrealistic concepts of the world. Man is, among many other things, the mistaken animal, the foolish animal. Other species doubtless have much more limited ideas about the world, but what ideas they do have are much less likely to be wrong and are never foolish. White cats do not denigrate black, and dogs do not ask Baal, Jehovah, or other Semitic gods to perform miracles for them.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Dog, Cat, Men

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• The aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth.

  Natasha Lyonne

  Ideas, Battle, Youth

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• I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.

  Sarah Polley

  Thinking, Often Is, Cynicism

  Interview with Katie Holmes, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 25, 2013.

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• Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Wise, Men, Thinking

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.498

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• He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

  Thomas Browne

  Honesty, Men, Choices

  Sir Thomas Browne (1835). “Sir Thomas Browne's Works: Repertorium. A letter to a friend. Christian morals. Certain miscellany tracts. Unpublished papers”, p.79

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• The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.

  Margaret Atwood

  Tired, Thinking, Goal

  Margaret Atwood (1987). “The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle”, Treasure Press

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• We are often infinitely mistaken, and take the falsest measures, when we envy the happiness of rich and great men; we know not the inward canker that eats out all their joy and delight, and makes them really much more miserable than ourselves.

  Joseph Hall

  Men, Envy, Joy

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• If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.

  Plutarch

  Mean, Men, Thinking

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• Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.

  Simone Weil

  Hurt, Men, Compassion

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.30, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• We have this mistaken notion that everybody in the world has to go to college. The colleges are already crowded with people who never in this world will absorb more than a rudimentary education, and we dilute everything to meet this low standard.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  College, People, World

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.103, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The oppressed without hope are mysteriously quiet. When the conception of change is beyond the limits of the possible, there are no words to articulate discontent so it is sometimes held not to exist. This mistaken belief arises because we can only grasp silence in the moment in which it is breaking.

  Sheila Rowbotham

  Silence, Limits, Belief

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• The idea that the Lord our God is not a personage of tabernacle is entirely a mistaken notion. He was once a man. Brother Kimball quoted a saying of Joseph the Prophet, that he would not worship a God who had not a Father; and I do not know that he would if be had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other. If he had a Father, he was made in his likeness. And if he is our Father we are made after his image and likeness.

  Brigham Young

  Mother, Brother, Father

  Brigham Young (1992). “The Essential Brigham Young”

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• It is easier to be mistaken about the true than the beautiful.

  Joseph Joubert

  Beautiful, Truth, Easier

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• None are too wise to be mistaken, but few are so wisely just as to acknowledge and correct their mistakes, and especially the mistakes of prejudice.

  Isaac Barrow

  Wise, Mistake, Prejudice

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• My anti-liberal position should not be mistaken for conservatism.

  Camille Paglia

  Anti Liberal, Should, Conservatism

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.241, Vintage

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• While the secular world pushes woman to find her identity in herself as a sex object, the popular teachings in the Church, equally mistaken, encourage woman to find her identity in her roles as wife and mother rather than in her status as a person in Christ, a daughter complete in Him.

  Leanne Payne

  Daughter, Mother, Sex

  Leanne Payne (1995). “The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ”, p.65, Baker Books

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• I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.

  Blaise Pascal

  Christian, Believe, Findings

  Blaise Pascal (2015). “Pensees: Thoughts on Religion”, p.86, Letcetera Publishing

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• It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers.

  William Rehnquist

  Wall, Years, Decision

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• To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!

  Blaise Pascal

  Christian, Believe, Loss

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• The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience.

  Charlie Munger

  Real, Men, Foolish Man

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