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About this quote

What does it mean?
Making progress often involves making mistakes or encountering failures along the way.
In plain terms
You cannot move forward without sometimes making errors.
What can you take from it?
Accept mistakes as part of moving forward.

Where it applies

  • innovation projects
  • personal development
  • scientific research

Putting it to work

  • expect setbacks in new initiatives
  • review errors for lessons

Questions to consider

  • What mistakes have taught you the most?
  • How do you define progress?

Another view

Not all errors lead to progress; some are purely wasteful.

More from Alfred North Whitehead

  1. Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its o…

    Permalink to quote #42
  2. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

    Permalink to quote #44
  3. In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched…

    Permalink to quote #41

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