Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself. ~Alfred Sheinwold
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him. ~Aldous Leonard Huxley, Texts and Pretexts, 1932
Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald. ~Proverb
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we are like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. ~Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Following the Equator, 1897
The trouble with using the experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson. ~Author Unknown
No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients. ~Hindu Proverb
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. ~Auguste Rodin
God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars. ~Elbert Hubbard
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes along. ~Samuel Butler, “Speech at the Somerville Club,” 27 February 1895
Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it. ~Author Unknown
Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment. ~Rita Mae Brown
If the experience was so important, we’d never have had anyone walk on the moon. ~Doug Rader
Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author. ~John Keats
If you want to understand democracy, spend less time in the library with Plato, and more time in the buses with people. ~Simeon Strunsky
You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. ~John Updike
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes. ~Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere’s Fan, 1896
Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t. ~Pete Seeger
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. ~Soren Kierkegaard
Looking back, you realize that everything would have explained itself if you had only stopped interrupting. ~Robert Brault
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. ~Mark Twain
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. ~Chinese Proverb
Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones. ~Josh Billings
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. ~David T. Wolf
A happy childhood is a poor preparation for human contacts. ~Colette
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. ~Stephen Leacock, Literary Lapses, 1910
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones. ~Author Unknown
The problem is that when you get it, you’re too damned old to do anything about it. ~Jimmy Connors, on experience
In youth we learn; in age we understand. ~Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew. ~Herb Caen
Wisdom before the experience is only words; wisdom after the experience is of no avail. ~Mark van Doren
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. ~John Gardner
Life, not the parson, teaches conduct. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years in college. ~Hubert Humphrey, speech, 1960
The experience I gained at age 21 would be useful if I were ever 21 again. But I’m 71 and new at it and keep making age 71 mistakes. ~Robert Brault
All that I know I learned after I was thirty. ~Georges Clemenceau
There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience. ~Laurence J. Peter
You couldn’t get hold of the things you’d done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens. ~Stephen King,
~Piet Hein, “The Road to Wisdom,” Grooks, 1966
We have two lives – the one we learn with and the life we live after that. ~Bernard Malamud, The Natural
The world is your school. ~Martin H. Fischer
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us. ~Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
Anything we tell our kids about life is a placemarker until they figure it out for themselves. ~Robert Brault
If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we’d all be millionaires. ~Abigail Van Buren
Information’s pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. ~Clarence Day, The Crow’s Nest
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. ~Andre Gide, Le traite du Narcisse, 1891
