...avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe.

It would appear to a quoting dilettante—i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority—that, as phrased by Hobbes, “from like antecedents flow like consequents.” Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain:

"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS

Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.

What I learned on my own I still remember

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.

Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.

Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric.