Elbert Hubbard? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Anxiety about making a mistake can cause inaction and paralysis. Moving forward inevitably leads to some errors and imperfections. Yet it is necessary to make choices, take action, and fix the accompanying mistakes. Here is a pertinent adage:
The greatest mistake is continually fearing you will make one.
This statement has been attributed to U.S. writer, publisher, and philosopher Elbert Hubbard. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Elbert Hubbard was the chief writer of the periodical “The Philistine”. The November 1901 issue contained a collection of miscellaneous quotations which included the following three items from Hubbard. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Not only does beauty fade, but it leaves a record upon the countenance as to what became of it.
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
The more one knows the more one simplifies.
QI believes that Elbert Hubbard deserves credit for the quotation under examination. Hubbard sometimes used quotations from others without listing an ascription, but QI has found no other substantive candidate for authorship of this quotation.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1905 The Coal Trade Journal printed a sundry collection of sayings under the title “Between Weighings”. A concise version of the quotation was included without attribution. Here were three items:2
The greatest mistake is continually fearing you will make one.
It is very easy to follow any advice that happens to be traveling the way you are going.
Many a true word spoken in jest is taken in deadly earnest.
In 1913 Elbert Hubbard published “The Book of Business”, and the quotation appeared as a chapter epigraph:3
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one
I notice that almost every man who is the manager of an office thinks that his helpers have a monopoly on stupidity. The real fact is, however, the thing is very evenly distributed.
In 1943 Edmund Fuller published “Thesaurus of Epigrams” containing the following entry with a slightly different phrasing using the word “this”:4
The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one. — Elbert Hubbard
In 2007 “Geary’s Guide To the World’s Great Aphorists” Elbert Hubbard received credit for an instance without “to be”:5
The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.
In conclusion, Elbert Hubbard deserves credit for this quotation. He published it in 1901 within “The Philistine”. Different phrasings entered circulation during subsequent decades.
Images Notes: A broken plate from CHUTTERSNAP at Unsplash. The image has been cropped.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to My Peak Challenge who tweeted this saying with an attribution to Elbert Hubbard. Great thanks to Jane Bella who subsequently inquired about the tweet which led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
Update History: On May 8, 2024 the format of the bibliographical notes was updated. Also, the full article was placed on this website.
- 1901 November, The Philistine, Volume 13, Number 6, (Untitled collection of miscellaneous quotations), Quote Page 187 and 188, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1905 February 1, The Coal Trade Journal, Between Weighings by The Weighman, Quote Page 84, Column 2, Frederick E. Saward, Editor and Proprietor, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1913, The Book of Business by Elbert Hubbard, Chapter: Bad Breaks in Business, Quote Page 51, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1943 Copyright, Thesaurus of Epigrams, Edited by Edmund Fuller, Topic: Mistakes, Quote Page 211, Crown Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans; HathiTrust) ↩︎
- 2007, Geary’s Guide To the World’s Great Aphorists by James Geary, Chapter: Comics, Critics, and Satirists, Person: Elbert Hubbard, Quote Page 38, Bloomsbury USA, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎