“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

The above quote is generally attributed to Mark Twain, because it sounds like something he would say. As it ends up, he probably didn’t say it after all. I suppose that it really doesn’t matter who said it. There is a true principle buried in there that it would be good for us to learn.

Douglas Adams, famed humorist put the same principle this way:

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Immature people reject every bit of advice handed to them. And why shouldn’t they? Nobody really understands their situation, right?

The sooner we grasp the fact that other people’s experience can be valuable, the sooner we really kick-start our own progress.