Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery

Written by James Joyce 1882–1941 · Irish novelist & poet
Verified Free to reuse

This line is spoken by Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses (1922), in the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode, during the library debate about Shakespeare — the exact wording is confirmed against the original 1922 text.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery” James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of James Joyce — Irish novelist & poet. Theme: "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
Ulysses
Episode
9, “Scylla and Charybdis”
First published
2 February 1922, Paris (Shakespeare and Company)
Speaker
Stephen Dedalus

—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Stephen's retort to John Eglinton, who had just suggested that Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway was simply a mistake.

Ulysses (1922), Episode 9 — Wikisource

How we verified this

Public domain

Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, well before the 1931 cutoff, and its U.S. copyright has since lapsed — the novel is publicly available in full through Project Gutenberg and Wikisource.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

The quotation itself is genuine and correctly credited to James Joyce — but it is one of the most frequently garbled lines in his work, which makes it worth flagging.

Popular condensed version: 'Mistakes are the portals of discovery.' Shortened

Widely circulated on quote sites and social media with the crucial qualifier — that this applies specifically to a 'man of genius' and that the errors are 'volitional' — stripped out, changing Stephen's meaning considerably. See the OUP blog on this ↗.

Ireland's 2013 €10 commemorative coin Misquoted

Issued by the Central Bank of Ireland to honor Joyce as part of a European commemorative coin series, the coin quoted a different Joyce line (from the 'Proteus' episode) inaccurately, becoming a well-publicized embarrassment precisely because Joyce is so often misquoted — see NPR's report ↗.

The line is authentically Joyce's, spoken by Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses — but it is very often trimmed down to 'mistakes are the portals of discovery,' which loses the original's specific claim about genius and volition; see the full text at Wikisource ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The line comes from the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses, set in the National Library of Ireland, where Stephen Dedalus holds forth on a theory of Shakespeare's life and marriage. When John Eglinton suggests that Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway was simply a mistake, Stephen dismisses the idea — genius, he argues, does not make mistakes in the ordinary sense; its apparent errors are chosen, and become the means by which new understanding is reached.

The aphorism has taken on a life well beyond its original context, frequently cited (and just as frequently truncated) as general wisdom about creativity and failure, stripped of the specific claim about genius that gives it its edge in the novel.

His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Failure Growth Creativity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Ulysses (1922), Episode 9en.wikisource.org

Full original 1922 text of the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode containing the exact quotation
Ulysses, full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg's free public-domain edition of the complete novel
"A man of genius makes no mistakes": Joycean misapprehensionsblog.oup.com

Oxford University Press blog on the quote's source and its history of being misquoted, including on a 2013 Irish coin
Ulysses (novel)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced entry for the line, with chapter attribution
A Blooming Mistake: Irish James Joyce Coin Misquotes Authornpr.org

NPR report on a real-world Joyce misquotation incident, illustrating how often his lines get garbled
James Joyceen.wikipedia.org

Biographical background on the author and his dates

The author

About James Joyce

James Joyce

1882–1941 · Irish novelist & poet

James Joyce was an Irish modernist writer best known for Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and his landmark novel Ulysses (1922), which reworks Homer's Odyssey across a single day in Dublin. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922, episode 9, “Scylla and Charybdis.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company, 1922, episode 9, “Scylla and Charybdis.”

APA (7th ed.)

Joyce, J. (1922). Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-man-of-genius-makes-no-mistakes-his-errors-are-volitional

Copied