Faith must trample under foot all reason sense and understanding.

Testing leads to failure and failure leads to understanding.

I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt abandonment disappointment longing failure and shame where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it.

We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success it's part of success.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men kindness and generosity openness honesty understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest sharpness greed acquisitiveness meanness egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true they just hope to find out what reality is like.

The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality basic human rights freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.