Walter Savage Landor Quotes
Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.
Landor, Walter Savage. Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen. Vol. 1, Taylor and Hessey, 1824, p. 352.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and appointees all will make mistakes unless they do nothing. Learning from those mistakes is an opportunity to avoid the same or similar errors in the future as well as to become wiser in general. However, many politicians are reluctant to admit that they made an error. In a polarized political atmosphere, political opponents will castigate politicians who admit to a , administrative, policy or judgment error. None the less, the greatest of the politicians learned from past errors and bcame great, in part as a result of their learning from mistakes.
Walter Savage Landor was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.
