Lin Yutang Quotes

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

If we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing our future.

I think if we don't understand history, if we don't keep referring back to it, we become complacent. And complacency, as we all know, it leads to repeating history.

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistake of our own period. And that means the old books.

We're not served by only knowing our finest hours through film or media, or in the history that we are taught. I think the only way we have a chance to not make the same mistakes again, is to historically understand the bad behavior and mistakes we've made previously.

I believe that you go through your past and you learn what you learn for whatever reason. I'm just glad I'm not making fifteen-year-old mistakes at twenty-six - I got that out of the way.

To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.

A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.

My history is long, and not much of it is good. I can't erase it, but I'm determined not to make another mistake. Not when the stakes are high, not when it comes to you.

When I made mistakes, people used to laugh. I could have learnt better, but I've always liked to make people laugh.

To build up a future, you have to know the past.

I'd rather make a mistake than do nothing.

Mistakes are growth, and we learn not to do it again. But it doesn't make you a terrible person. That's important to me.

Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.

None of us is perfect. There was only one perfect man who ever walked the earth, and He was the Son of God. We all have weaknesses and I guess we all make mistakes and will make mistakes in the future, but look for the virtues, the strengths, the goodness in those with whom you labor, and draw those characteristics into your own lives and make them a part of yourselves, and you will be the richer for it all the days that you live.

The past doesn't define you, your present does. It's okay to create a vision of the future because it affects your behavior in the "now," but don't dwell on past mistakes. Learn from them and focus those lessons in the moment. That's where change can really happen.

I made mistakes, I made some bread. I even made a way for them to get ahead.

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain. Put the time in. Hear your mistakes. Yeah, it sucks, it's humbling, it makes you want to throw the guitar out the window. But if you work on your mistakes, they'll eventually go away, and you'll become a strong player.

No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.

The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.

I maybe made some mistakes, but I'm only human.

Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.

There were a lot of missteps in the early days, but because we got in early we got to make more mistakes than other people.