What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Experience yields mixed conclusions. We often draw wrong lessons as often as right ones.
- In plain terms
- Learning from experience is unreliable. We make wrong guesses often.
- What can you take from it?
- Experience does not guarantee truth.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do we learn?
- Can past prove future?
Another view
Experience remains our best guide despite flaws.
More from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
Permalink to quote #68 Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
Permalink to quote #70 Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.
Permalink to quote #67
Related quotes
To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
Shunryu SuzukaShunryu Suzuka quote #12 If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis BaconFrancis Bacon quote #16 And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce
Lenny BruceLenny Bruce quote #37