You really gave stupid examples, intent matters and context matters. You can't make a phrase sound bad by giving ludicrous examples of people using it to say absurd things like "forgive your rapist nobody is perfect" and whatnot lmao. — Judaka
In your example it's unhelpful. If you'd drop my favourite mug and I reply with "well, nobody's perfect" I trust it helps you to understand I value you more than my mug. — Benkei
In other examples, for the most common use, people say "Nobody's perfect" when they defend a wrongdoer. In essence, what they are saying is, "It's ok that they did something wrong, because we all do wrong things. Therefore, he doesn't need to take responsibility for what he has done." — chatterbears
Things that are useful can be consistently used throughout any example, similar to a moral principle. — chatterbears
I believe perfection is attainable and there is nothing wrong with striving for it. This discussion shouldn't be really important cause we should not rely on other people's feedback and neither should they rely on ours. We know ourselves quite well. If someone wants to get the noble prize in physics then he better be at the top of his game, otherwise it would be a ridiculous goal. Perfection is actually quite visible in our world, the bridge that won't fall and the building which stands despite the earthquake are perfectly made. Moral perfection on the other hand is a different story... — Wittgenstein
That's absurd, you have quite a way of thinking about things. "Nobody's perfect" can mean different things based on the context, it absolutely never means "I'm disputing your position that you're perfect" except when perfection was actually claimed but I am genuinely amazed that you've taken it that way. — Judaka
I do enjoy how you've tried to misrepresent the phrase as being a way of apologising for rapists and feeling as if since you did that there's no possible utility to the phrase anymore. — Judaka
That actually might be a cultural thing. Where I'm from (the Netherlands) we use it mostly when someone is being too hard on themselves. So here it's most often used to say "stop complaining and cheer up". Or even more common is when the person complaining recognises it in themselves and tells themselves "nobody's perfect" to accept failure and move on. — Benkei
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