Wisdom Comes from Experience: This quote by Terry Pratchett is a circular one. We can’t get experience without making mistakes. These mistakes help us understand what went wrong and give an indication of how to make it right. We can’t waste time trying to be perfect or else we miss the opportunity to gain wisdom and amass experiences. In this article, we talk about the meaning and inspiration from the quote by Terry Pratchett
Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
Terry Pratchett
Table of Contents
Wisdom comes from experience Meaning
This quote however doesn’t ask us to purposefully make unnecessary mistakes. We ought to be clever about making the right decisions. But we can’t waste time trying to make a perfect decision. Wisdom comes from experience! We make mistakes, we learn from them and hope we don’t repeat them. Or at least try. As simple as that!
The meaning of wisdom comes from experience talks us in these themes:
- Wisdom and knowledge come after a few mistakes
- We can’t be afraid of committing mistakes or worry too much about being perfect
- Our success lies in the ability to learn and move forward quickly
- Don’t be afraid to make decisions, your work will take you ahead
What does it mean when Terry Pratchett says – Wisdom comes from experience, experience is often a result of lack of wisdom?
Our knowledge at any point in time is limited. We will never know the full extent or outcomes of our work. Life is complex and many unknowns will influence the direction of our life. At any point, the best thing we can do is to decide with all the data that we have. In the process, we will gain wisdom through feedback. In other words, we ought to be agile enough to adapt to the feedback from the world. This summarises that – Wisdom comes from experience.
Inspiration – Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of a lack of wisdom – Terry Pratchett
Now let’s look at the inspiration from this quote – wisdom comes from experience. It is common knowledge that our wisdom is from successes and failures. In essence, it belongs to the experiences of the past. The main inspiration from this quote however is that we can’t wait to make the perfect decisions. Remember the quote – I don’t believe in taking right decisions? It nudges us to treat time wisely so that we can take decisions quicker.
The main point however is to focus on getting rich and good quality experiences, it will help us grow and move forward in life. Instead of trying to avoid mistakes, the best thing we can do is to try and create good quality experiences. We will make mistakes but perhaps wisdom helps us avoid repeating some of them. If we don’t learn from our experiences, then it is as good as wasting an opportunity. In essence, this wisdom tells us to continually grow and keep moving forward with life.
Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
Terry Pratchett
Practical Steps – Wisdom comes from experience, experience is often the lack of wisdom
Let’s talk about some of the practical steps we can take from the inspiration of this quote.
Mistakes, experiences help create wisdom
Look for the lessons in our experiences which create wisdom: If we split this quote from Terry Pratchett further, experience is often the lack of wisdom. Think about this – if we had all these experiences, we’d never make a mistake. But life is never that simple right? We will make mistakes, our problems are complicated. These complications help us be more aware of time and create our experience log.
You can have more experience with quick decisions
Don’t wait to make good decisions, time is more valuable than the perfect decision: The next time we make a decision, we look back at these experiences and learn to protect ourselves. This is the central point right – what do we learn from our experiences and how do we grow in the process? Experience is created from the lack of wisdom. But each time we get an experience, we improve and increase our wisdom. With time, the type of mistakes we make change and so does the quality of our life.
Learn from experiences so that you can convert lessons into wisdom
Wisdom is created through introspection, actively spending time to understand what your experiences mean to you. Sometimes we brush off our failures because it’s too hard to think about them. It is at these moments we must think about reflect about this quote. Look for the lessons in these failures – what are they telling you so that you can use it to build your wisdom and continue your journey of constant improvement.
Wisdom comes from experience, Experience is often a result of a lack of wisdom – Shareable Quotes
Related reading:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1654.Terry_Pratchett
True maniparna. You said it, we have to play around and we have to find the best fit for us. There is no escaping the irony !!
Committing mistakes makes us perfect, at least near perfect. :-D Jokes apart, the quote talks about life and its ways. It’s a circle and once we are in…we have to play around, anything we can gather during the process, helps us to continue the journey in a better way… :-)
Thank you Hargun, I loved the quote, it kinda left like a complete irony to me. Or like Shamsud said, more of an oxymoron, an extremely paradoxical one. It took a couple of rereads to understand the implications and there we go a post is on it :). I am glad to know that you liked the train of thoughts, loved hearing your views on the same. It would be great to see more of you on the discussion front here, looking forward to more such mature discussions :)
That was a mind boggling quote! To err is human but learning from it and trying not to repeat that is in our hands.
If we never commit mistakes, won’t life become dull and drab? moreover, applying the wisdom gained by learning from mistakes indeed adds that flavor to life which makes it all more interesting! It gives us those small moments of joy ;) So I think both should go hand in hand.
Also, I totally agree with Somali about being vicarious-that certainly helps :)
It was a indeed a great post. keep it up!
He he, thats the perfect word Shamsud :). Oxymoron indeed!
Thank you Somali :). Indeed, sometimes we don’t need to go through the physical experience. Just the vicarious one would do :). After all, we all have very limited time and it sure is a very expensive resource.
I like this quote a lot. In this context, the thumb rule that can apply to all is – Make a few mistakes, and learn more from other’s mistakes.:-)
The Quote itself is an oxymoron and very true :)