It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.
Forgiveness Quotes
Muhammad leads, followed by Shakespeare, Jesus, Julian of Norwich and the comics writer J. M. DeMatteis. The sourced poems are the ones to read. Alexander Pope’s The Universal Prayer (1738) asks that the mercy we show others be shown to us. Philip James Bailey’s Festus (1839) says they who forgive most shall be most forgiven. Wordsworth’s lines on Sweet Mercy are from his 1803 Scottish tour.
The one flagged entry is “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission,” credited to the computer scientist Grace Hopper and marked misattributed. The notes list several print sources from the 1980s, among them a 1986 Navy magazine.
Most quoted on forgiveness:
It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.
I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.
Our rule is the works of mercy… It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence.
Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Kind hearts are here; yet would the tenderest one
Have limits to its mercy; God has none.
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Forgiveness to the injured does belong;
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.
Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.
God loves our mercy to one another; but not upon conditions at variance with sanctity to Him.