Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes

It's easy to make mistakes. It's living with the consequences of them that's the hardest.

My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.

Learning from our mistakes is critical for improving, but even I don't have patience for ranking my regrets. Regret is a negative emotion that inhibits the optimism required to take on new challenges. You risk living in an alternative universe, where if only you had done this or that differently, things would be better. That's a poor substitute for making your actual life better, or improving the lives of others. Regret briefly, analyze and understand, and then move on, improving the only life you have.

Everybody has seen that I make mistakes. Every single album I have ever made is about love. But I am not going to give up. I have to look at what I do wrong. I rush in, I get swept up, I ignore the signs. But so many of us are guilty of these things. Each time it goes wrong, it's hard. I get really hurt but I have to let myself go: 'What did I do? What can I learn?' And as hard and as hurtful as things get, I want to believe I will be able to go one step higher. I've got to hope that if I keep going I will eventually get it right.

Sulking about your mistakes only leads to future ones.

if i have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over - only living with the mistakes you've made. but then, caleb taught me long ago you can't build anything without some sort of foundation. maybe we learn to live our lives by understanding, firsthand, how not to live them.

Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.

You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.

If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made.

Made plenty of mistakes along the way - all of which I am truly sorry.

I made my share of mistakes. People can look at that as what not to do, and if they choose to make fun of it, that's fine. I can't control that. All I know is that I can control myself. And at that point in my life, I wasn't even able to do that.

I have the impression that every time I'm heartbroken, I leave a bit of myself behind. I am the believer. I go back and do the same mistakes over and over again and sign them proudly.

You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

I've learned so much from all my mistakes. I just wish I had gotten my education.

I'm not sure I'd go back and do anything over in my life. I've definitely had my fair share of failures and moments where I wasted my time or that of other people, but if I did those moments over, I'd have missed out on so many lessons.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

I've made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven't lived in vain.

I feel in my own life I've made many mistakes. I've failed in many directions.

I've made a lot of career mistakes. A lot. Actually, a lot of personal ones, too.

In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it's just a case of moving on and learning from it.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.

I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night.

I've hurt people unnecessarily when it was about my own insecurities. But you have to make those mistakes to become a better person.