A Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring. [p. 199]

Mary Catherine Bateson

Quote Topics

About Critical Either Experience Growth Inspiring Keep Learning Least Led Make Making Making The Same Mistakes Mistakes New New One Others People Question Regret Remorse Same Same Mistakes Seem Some Some People Whether While

Quote Author

Mary Catherine Bateson
American - Scientist
Born: December 8, 1939

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.

Garry Kasparov

Guilt at least has a purpose; it tells us we've violated some ethical code. Ditto for remorse. Those feelings are educational; they manufacture wisdom. But regret-regret is useless.

Daniel Smith

If you did something in 1975 that you deeply regret and that you now can recognize as having been profoundly irresponsible, for example, the only way to be lifted out of deep regret and the pain over it is through atonement - through the kind of remorse that leads to genuine atonement, the making of amends, and forgiveness of self and others.

Marianne Williamson

I regret that I was never an athlete. I regret there isn't time in life. I regret that so many of my friends have died. I regret that I was not brave at certain times in my life. I regret that I'm not beautiful. I regret that my conversation is largely with myself. I'm not part of the conversation of the world.

Richard Rodriguez

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!

Alfred Adler

I don't go around thinking about regret; regret doesn't consume me as a person... I'm not certain about whether any writer, any artist, any musician, can write without regret, so I don't think perhaps it's even particularly Southern.

Barry Hannah

When making a film, I'm never concerned about whether the theme is new or whether it's been done before in cinema or not. I'm led to make films if there's a theme that interests me or I experience something in my own life that confronts me with something that I want to deal with.

Michael Haneke

And initially, a lot of companies avoid trying to make a really radical new kind of title for a new system, because that would involve learning a new machine and learning how to make the new title at the same time.

Trip Hawkins

My biggest regret is that I've assisted the media in making me into a cartoon character. I don't regret what has happened to me, but I regret the way I have dealt with it.

Megan Fox

You have to have the kind of personality where you're resilient and you can get up and keep moving and learn what there is. What I tell my employees is, 'I want you to make mistakes. If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. But, when we make a mistake, let's all study it. Let's all learn from it. After that, we want to make different mistakes. We don't want to keep making the same mistakes.'

Trip Hawkins

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

Neil Gaiman

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.

Mignon McLaughlin

Regret is not an apology. I regret that I ran the stop sign, right, but, yeah, I'm not sorry for what I speaking. I regret that because I got a ticket. You can regret things and still not be sorry for them.

Don Lemon

It is said that if our intention is to help others-even if we are unable to follow it through-we will never have any regret. Regret is a result of trying to make "me" happy.