Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?

We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesen't remind us what we did badly, it reminds us what we know we could do better.

The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.

We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.

A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.

Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.