The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

1. November 1901Earliest found · credited to no one (Hubbard’s magazine)Printed in The Philistine among short sayings by its editor.The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, vol. 13, no. 6 (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, November 1901), p. 188. Checked on a page scan. Source
2. 1913Spread · credited to Elbert HubbardHubbard uses it in the chapter ‘Bad Breaks in Business’ of his Book of Business.Elbert Hubbard, The Book of Business (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, 1913), chapter ‘Bad Breaks in Business’, p. 51. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
3. 1923Spread · credited to Elbert HubbardThe posthumous Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams prints it among his epigrams.Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, 1923), p. 131. Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source
4. 1927Spread · credited to Elbert HubbardThe Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, compiled by his son, sets it as a boxed motto in capitals.The Greatest Mistake You Can Make in Life is to be Continually Fearing You Will Make OneThe Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, compiled by Bert Hubbard (New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1927), p. 129. Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source

One of a run of short unsigned sayings that Hubbard, editor and chief writer of The Philistine, printed in his magazine in November 1901, between a line on the ‘thought of damnation’ and ‘The more one knows the more one simplifies’. He used it again in his writing on business, and the Roycrofters kept printing it: as an epigram in the 1923 Book of Epigrams and as a boxed motto in The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927).

Fear of making mistakes does more harm than the mistakes themselves, because it keeps you from acting at all.

• ShortenedThe greatest mistake is continually fearing you will make one. A shortened form in circulation, the one Quote Investigator’s questioner cites. Where it was seen
• A misquotationThe greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one. The form in Edmund Fuller’s Thesaurus of Epigrams (1943), credited to Hubbard (per Quote Investigator); the Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923) also prints it in this form, on p. 107 (seen on the page image of the archive.org scan, leaf n110), besides the ‘in life’ form on p. 131. Where it was seen

Life, Emotions, Wisdom

• You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. (misattributed) C. S. Lewis
• We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. Maya Angelou
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (misattributed) Mark Twain
• While it is put off, life runs past. Seneca the Younger
• The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. (not found) Mark Twain

• quoteinvestigator.com/2023/07/22/mistake-fear (Quote Investigator, ‘The Greatest Mistake You Can Make In Life Is To Be Continually Fearing You Will Make One’, 22 July 2023)
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard (The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, 1927)

Elbert Hubbard, The Philistine (1901), The Philistine, November 1901, p. 188 (among short sayings); later in the Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923), p. 131, and The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 129. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/the-greatest-mistake-you-can-make-in-life/ (23 October 2026).

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