We must be fully prepared to commit mistakes first

"We all make mistakes; to err is not distinctively human. But although many other living things, animals and even plants, do have a partial ability to anticipate some of their mistakes, to recognize them and even to learn from them, only human beings, it seems, actively assert themselves in this direction. Rather than wait for errors to reveal themselves, perhaps with disastrous consequences, we consciously and deliberately seek them out: we put our ideas and inventions to the test, we probe critically, we scrap what we find to be wrong and try again. Mingled with this critical attitude there is admittedly a distinctive human weakness : the feeling that we should be ashamed of our mistakes, and should regret making them, since they must be the result of our incompetence or our lack of mature insight. Yet such qualms are out of place and need to be firmly quashed, for there is no way known of systematically avoiding error; no way known, in particular, of avoiding it in our exploration of the unknown. Thus a reluctance to make mistakes typically degenerates into a wariness of new ideas, into a distaste for any kind of bold initiative. If we are in earnest to discover what the world is like, we must be fully prepared to correct mistakes; but if we are to correct them, we must be fully prepared to commit them first."