“Learn from your failures”, Mark Cuban
The path to success is littered with hurdles. Therefore, you will fail many times. Each failure is an opportunity to learn. Over time you learn enough to become someone who is capable of being successful. If you never learn from your failures, then you are simply doomed to repeat your mistakes.
In the Medieval ages and most of renaissance period, European cities had two common problem: chronic diseases that impacted everyone and fire. People blamed these problems on “the will of God” or “man’s immoral behavior”. At the same time, a major city, Istanbul did not face this problem. The same cities did not face this problem when they were part of the Roman Empire. The problem was waste disposal. People threw garbage everywhere. Defecated anywhere they liked. Sanitation facilities were inadequate. The general hygiene of the population was very poor. The litter and human waste invited all kinds of pests and every so often the garbage caught fire and burned down large portions of the cities. By not admitting their own mistakes and simply saying that it is the will of a higher power who they cannot control, people simply enabled themselves to not learn from their failures.
Fortunately, this mindset changed. The same cities that were unlivable with thousands of people now have hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, but they don’t face the same problems. They learned from their failures and built infrastructure to provide a healthy livable environment. They created laws that reflect what they learned from past mistakes. They educated their people to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Learn from your mistakes or be doomed to repeat them. This applies to individuals and societies.