Logical Mistake Quotes

Logical thinking can outwit random processing! ~ Stephen Richards

Many people confuse the statement "almost all terrorists are Moslems" with "almost all Moslems are terrorists." Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than one billion Moslems and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand. So the logical mistake makes you (unconsciously) overestimate the odds of a randomly drawn individual Moslem person (between the age of, say, fifteen and fifty) being a terrorist by close to fifty thousand times!

[...]Our inferential machinery, that which we use in daily life, is not made for a complicated environment in which a statement changes markedly when its wording is slightly modified. Consider that in a primitive environment there is no consequential difference between the statements "most killers are wild animals" and "most wild animals are killers". There is an error here, but it is almost inconsequential. Our statistical intuitions have not evolved for a habitat in which these subtleties can make a big difference. ~ Nicholas Nassim Taleb

We seldom make logical mistakes, but often have mistaken logics. ~ Raheel Farooq

A mistake would have been fatal."
-Sherlock Holmes- ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

If you can understand and believe that you have made choices that took you to a place you don't like, doesn't it make logical sense thatyou can now make choices that will take you to a place you do like?"
... "So now your game becomes one of seeking wisdom and harnessing the power of that wisdom in order to make better choices. ~ Andy Andrews

Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. ~ Christian D. Larson

From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had once more shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him any attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of a slight movement on her part towards him with the same tender and sceptical solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when they are nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady, relate, as significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went through his accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we had made in adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to enjoy it, if he digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet to-morrow,"
although they themselves know that these things are meaningless on the eve of an inevitable death. ~ Marcel Proust

Male fruit flies also become a bit randy, although they are less likely to mate successfully - perhaps because, in their alcohol-induced haze, they frequently court other males by mistake, instead of females. ~ Jennifer Ouellette

Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. ~ Linus Torvalds

Money is not worth dying for. I know, because years ago, while nearly a million dollars in debt, suicide was an option. Rather than run, rich dad suggested I write down all the mistakes I made and then seek help. If I made accounting mistakes, I talked to an accountant. If there was a legal mistake, I talked to an attorney. That was my way out. That is how I got smarter. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

In previous years I was so fired up at times I made little mistakes. So I kept telling myself to be patient, relax, play like you do in practice. What I've been doing in practice will carry over into the game. ~ Randall Cunningham

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types
the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The thing about divorce is, there isn't always one mistake. One nuclear
bomb dropped on a couple that destroys their marriage. Sometimes, it creeps
up on you slowly. And one day, realization hits and all you know is that you
don't want to be married anymore. Maybe a nuclear bomb would have been
better than slowly burning to death. Maybe that wouldn't make you feel like
such a failure. It kills you to give up, but you know it's the right decision.
Because if you keep going, you'll hate each other. ~ Devney Perry

This is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be paid for in full. ~ Clarence Day

You're going to make mistakes as a parent. It's literally inevitable. You're human, and mistakes are just part of being human. It's how you handle your mistakes that matters most. Acknowledge them. Apologize for them. Make them as right as possible. Learn something from them. And then let them go. It's okay. I promise. After all, how else will our little humans learn that it's okay to be human. ~ L.R. Knost

If Spence had really wanted to bed Miss Nordstrum, he would have said how she'd been in his mind since the moment he arrived in Reederville. He'd have added that her visits to Amanda after the baby's birth had given him hope that she might have come in part to see him.
And he would have ended by assuring her that when he agreed to go riding with her today it hadn't been with the intention of kissing her, but
her beauty had stolen his senses away and he couldn't resist her
charms. He wouldn't have fucked her that afternoon, but sometime within a month, he could've seduced her into bed.
Spence was a master at weaving a spell of words to charm a woman
into doing what he wanted. Hadn't he proven that with Amanda? Amanda, who wouldn't leave his head, day or night.
Amanda, the most colossal mistake of his life. ~ Bonnie Dee

No one likes to fail. But we mortals do not become champions without effort and discipline or without making mistakes. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Addy gives me hope, because even though her life fell apart when Simon's blog revealed her worst mistake, she put things back together–better than before. She's stronger, happier, and much closer to her sister. Addy is the queen of second chances, and right now I really need the reminder that those exist. ~ Karen M. McManus

Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor, and wise are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

They were ghosts, I suppose, the procession of the dead. They weren't pale kings and pale maidens, they were work-worn men and women - perfectly ordinary people, except for being dead. You'd never mistake them for living people. You couldn't quite see through them, but they were even more drained of colour than everything else, and they weren't quite as solid as they ought to be. One of the men I recognised. He had been sitting in Fedw Hir near Grampar making blubbing sounds with his mouth. Now he strode along easily with a spring in his step. His face was grave and composed, he was a man with dignity and purpose. He bent and picked up one of my oak leaves from the path and offered it like a ticket at the cinema as he passed between the two trees. I didn't see anyone take it. I couldn't see into the darkness at all. ~ Jo Walton

I always try to remember that I am a work in progress. When I maintain that perspective, I realize that I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to have it all together. I don't need to try to have all the answers. And I don't need to learn everything in a day. When I make a mistake, it's not because I'm a failure or worthless. I just didn't do something right because I still haven't improved enough in some part of the process. And that motivates me to keep growing and improving. If I don't know something, it's an opportunity to try to improve in a new area. ~ John C. Maxwell

There's never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you're projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don't have to: you're living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom. ~ Byron Katie

His only mistake was not realizing there was a second car. There's always a second car. Except when there's not. ~ Brian Evenson

God doesn't make mistakes and timing unfolds as it should. ~ Ashley Judd

Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night. ~ Markus Zusak

It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it. ~ Newt Gingrich

We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me.
"This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. "I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. "I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time."
I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved.
"Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. "And yes, I am on the same date you are on."
"I thought so," he said. "I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal."
He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at ~ Melissa Febos

[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical. ~ George Orwell

The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. ~ Anna Quindlen

My father always told me that in this world we are going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy ~ Joan Bauer

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time. ~ E.L. Doctorow

The mistake every lonely person makes is to confuse attention with love. ~ Marty Rubin

But then sometimes you make a catastrophic mistake, you think I am going to kill myself because the sculpture is ruined, but in the end it come out more incredible than had you not made the mistake. This is why I love the rocks. When I sculpt with clay, it feel like cheating. It is too easy. It has no will of its own. The rocks are formidable. They stand up to you. It is a fair fight. Sometimes you win. Sometimes they win. Sometimes when they win, you win. ~ Jandy Nelson

Helping people was always a mistake ...
Trust was a word for fools. It was a word people used when they meant to betray you. ~ Joe Abercrombie

One mistake up here and it's half a day out with the undertaker! ~ Fred Dibnah

What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief. ~ Sarah Kane

IT IS A MISTAKE to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

It is a mistake to talk of the twilight of age, or the blurred sight of old people. The long day grows clearer at its close, and the petty fogs of prejudice which rose between us and our fellows in youth melt away as the sun goes down. At last we see God's creatures as they are. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

To grant life more importance than it has is the mistake committed in sagging systems; as a consequence, no one is ready to sacrifice himself to defend them, and they collapse under the first blows perpetrated upon them. This is even more true of nations in general. Once they begin to hold life sacred, it abandons them, it ceases to be on their side. ~ Emil Cioran

We have a sense of continuity, which gives us what we call a sense of time. Through our ability to have remembrances of both what's coming and what's happening and what has happened, we begin to piece together a logical picture of the world. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

The only way to maximize group creativity - to make the whole more than the sum of its parts - is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong. ~ Jonah Lehrer

Learning to spot narcissists and deal with their destructive behavior can save you the world of hurt that awaits anyone who mistakes the near enemy for a friend. ~ Martha Beck