Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
Interpretation
Everyone makes mistakes, but those made after careful thought can be particularly regrettable.
This quote highlights the significance of mistakes in human experience, suggesting that the most damaging errors often arise from overthinking or intelligence. It emphasizes that even well-crafted decisions can lead to failure, reminding us of the inherent fallibility of human judgment, irrespective of intellectual capability.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about learning from failure.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it.
And the quality of good judgement is clearly a form of knowledge and skill, as it is because of knowledge and not because of ignorance that we judge well.
I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.
Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
Security isn't what the wise person looks for - it's opportunity.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
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