for experience does not always mean wisdom.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Experience can be a very bad teacher, indeed, or not teacher at all. It is like the silly phrase, “Practice makes perfect.” In most cases, practice merely confirms us in our errors, and the longer we do something the wrong way - that is, without enlightenment and instruction- the more fixed we become in our folly.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience, and experience only," I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"

There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn. You see, advice and lovelorn don't go together. Because advice makes love sound like some sort of cognitive activity, but we know that it isn't. We all know that it's some sort of horrible chemical reaction over which we have absolutely no control. And that's why advice doesn't work.

Experience is indeed essential to science, but its role is different from that supposed by empiricism. It is not the source from which theories are derived. Its main use is to choose between theories that have already been guessed. That is what ‘learning from experience’ is.

People are changed not by exhortations to do things but by experiences... they may be changed by experience, in a way that could never be achieved with mere good advice.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.

Experience helps in terms of being able to do the job in a satisfactory manner so when people see your experience play out, ideally they acknowledge your skillset and give you more opportunities.

Experience may teach us what is, but never that it cannot be otherwise.

One advice I always give to young people is that no experience is a waste. Try your hand at whatever your heart leads you to do.

"They keep telling you, when you’re older, you’ll have experience — and that’s supposed to be so great. What would you say about that, sir? Is it really any use, would you say?"

"What kind of experience?”

“Well — places you’ve been to, people you’ve met. Situations you’ve been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again. All that stuff that’s supposed to make you wise, in your later years.”

“Let me tell you something, Kenny. For other people, I can’t speak — but, personally, I haven’t gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I’ve been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn’t seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier and sillier — and that’s a fact.”

“No kidding, sir? You can’t mean that! You mean, sillier than when you were young?”

“Much, much sillier.”

“I’ll be darned. Then experience is no use at all? You’re saying it might just as well not have happened?”

“No. I’m not saying that. I only mean, you can’t use it. But if you don’t try to — if you just realize it’s there and you’ve got it — then it can be kind of marvelous."

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.