Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Interpretation
Success can lead us to complacency, preventing further growth, while failure teaches us valuable lessons.
This quote by Kenneth E. Boulding suggests that achievement may create a false sense of confidence that hinders further learning and development. In contrast, it is through failure that we truly gain insights and understanding, allowing us to improve and advance in our endeavors. Success can make us less reflective, while failures encourage contemplation and adaptation.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience, one could say this quote to emphasize the importance of learning from setbacks.
As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.
Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.
Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.
Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?
How can you get very far, If you don't know who you are? How can you do what you ought, If you don't know what you've got? And if you don't know which to do Of all the things in front of you, Then what you'll have when you are through Is just a mess without a clue Of all the best that can come true If you know What and Which and Who.
Where are they written?" "In the world around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life, and you will discover where, every moment of the day, He hides His words and His will. Seek to do as He asks: this alone is the reason you are in the world." "If I discover it, I'll write it on clay tablets." "Do so. But write them, above all, in your heart; there they can neither burned nor destroyed, and you will take them wherever you go.
A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.
Only intimacy with the self will bring about true healing.
Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.
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