Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.
It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Success requires a significant amount of trial and error to achieve mastery in any field.
In the quote by Wernher Von Braun, he highlights the importance of perseverance and learning through mistakes. The sheer number of errors signifies that expertise, especially in complex fields like rocket science, is reached only after countless attempts, failures, and lessons learned, underscoring the value of resilience and commitment on the path to success.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about innovation and technology, I would say, 'As Wernher Von Braun observed, it takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket—highlighting that perseverance through failure is key to achieving success.'
More from Wernher Von Braun
All quotes →I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
Similar quotes
Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinate s the expertise of chemists, biologists, geologists and physicists, all to discover the past, present, and future of the cosmos-and our humble place within it.
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
Receiving the National Medal of Science is the thrill of a lifetime, but good science does not happen in isolation.
You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.
...99 percent confident that the world really was getting warmer and that there was a high degree of probability that it was due to human-made greenhouse gases.
The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.