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The first thing that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the brain—those false notions that have been put into us in youth.
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“The first thing that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the brain—those false notions that have been put into us in youth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

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Source
Counsels and Maxims
Date
1851
English wording
T. Bailey Saunders — Translator · from German
Meaning

Meaning of “The first thing that experience finds to do…”

Experience is presented as corrective: inherited assumptions and youthful projections can be revised when later encounters expose a mismatch between expectation and reality.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The statement belongs to Schopenhauer’s broader, characteristically pessimistic discussion of age and experience.

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AttitudeCuriosityGrowthGrowth MindsetHumilityInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindMindsetMotivation For LifePersonal GrowthThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentTruthUnderstandingExperienceMaturityPerspective
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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning · 1605
Meaning & context

Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.

Source details

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.

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experience, intellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to increase in size
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“experience, intellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to increase in size”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Counsels and Maxims · 1851
Meaning & context

Schopenhauer describes accumulated experience and practiced inquiry as resources that can continue growing even while other capacities change with age.

Source details

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The passage appears in an age-related comparison of intellectual powers and accumulated material.

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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.
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“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”

William James · The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy · 1897
Meaning & context

James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.

Source details

The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.

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it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.

Source details

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.

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The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.
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“The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.”

Walter Pater · The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873
Meaning & context

Pater values philosophy for sharpening attention: its practical intellectual service is to make perception more alert rather than allowing experience to pass unnoticed through habit.

Source details

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The line belongs to Pater’s historically controversial conclusion on experience and culture.

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What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy
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“What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy”

Walter Pater · The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873
Meaning & context

Pater recommends intellectual openness and repeated testing rather than easy conformity, making revision and exposure to new impressions part of an active critical life.

Source details

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The sentence names Comte, Hegel and one’s own orthodoxy in its immediate continuation.

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