If You Make A Mistake And

From Analects Book XV, Chapter 30. The original Chinese (過而不改，是謂過矣) can be rendered literally as: "A fault and not amending it — this is truly called a fault." The statement is almost tautological in form, but the rhetorical force lies in the distinction: the initial mistake is not, by itself, the real error. Confucius taught that the capacity to recognize and correct mistakes was itself a measure of moral character, and that the true shame lay in knowingly persisting in them.