Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
Interpretation
The quote suggests that people often fail to learn from their past experiences.
Barbara Tuchman's quote emphasizes the notion that while learning from one's experiences is a vital skill, it is seldom fully utilized or practiced by individuals. This lack of engagement with our past can hinder personal growth and the ability to make better decisions in the future, highlighting the importance of reflection and analysis in the learning process.
In practice
During a motivational workshop, a speaker could use this quote to emphasize the need for learning from past errors.
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
One constant among the elements of 1914βas of any eraβwas the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact.
If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they're suffering from childhood.
I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.
Regardless of zip code, talent and IQ are evenly distributed, so we need to make sure that opportunity is evenly distributed, too.
I went to college because I didn't have anywhere else to go and it was a fabulous hang. And while I was there I was exposed to this world that I didn't know was possible.
Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child's nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.