And we shall succeed not in spite of but through our failures:
We advance to the truth by experience of error; we succeed through failures. We know not how to do right except by having done wrong. . . . We know what is right, not positively, but negatively--we do not see the truth at once and make towards it, but we fall upon and try error, and find it is not the truth. We grope about by touch, not by sight, and so by a miserable experience exhaust the possible modes of acting until nought is left, but truth, remaining. Such is the process by which we succeed; we walk to heaven backward.
John Henry Newman 1801-1890
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