We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
Daniel DennettRead
Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them - if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Making mistakes can provide valuable lessons and clarity for improvement.
This quote by Daniel Dennett emphasizes the significance of mistakes in the learning process. Rather than shying away from errors, actively seeking them can lead to clearer insights and a better understanding of how to improve or rectify a situation. Mistakes serve as important reference points in our personal and intellectual growth.
Themes
MistakesLearningGrowthImprovementClarity
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech to students about embracing their failures.
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes →Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
Daniel DennettRead
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
Daniel DennettRead
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Daniel DennettRead
Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
Daniel DennettRead
As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
Daniel DennettRead
Similar quotes
Confidence and hope do more good than physic.
GalenRead
To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.
Bernard Le Bovier De FontenelleRead
You will never get any more out of this life than you expect.
Bruce LeeRead
Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice.
Winston ChurchillRead
It's amazing what we lose in life by listening to fear, instead of listening to God.
Joyce MeyerRead
Living _x000D_ consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and _x000D_ responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the _x000D_ moment.
Sidney PoitierRead