Creativity Quote by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo flips the usual complaint on its head: it is not life that misleads you, it is you who insists life should come with a user manual. “Experience does not err” is a bracing defense of the real-world trial, the observable fact, the stubborn evidence in front of your eyes. The sting comes in the second sentence, where he blames “judgments” for demanding from experience what it can never provide: certainty, moral clarity, cosmic fairness, a neat narrative arc.

This works because it quietly stages a power struggle between the world and the mind. Experience is figured as “her,” almost maternal, but also indifferent; she offers raw material, not interpretation. The ego wants experience to behave like a tutor - to explain itself, to reassure, to justify. Leonardo, the consummate maker and investigator, refuses that bargain. For an artist-engineer who dissected bodies, studied water, mapped light, and designed machines, the subtext is methodological: stop projecting theories onto phenomena and start treating perception as data that must be tested, revised, and re-seen.

The Renaissance context matters. Leonardo lived in an era drunk on rediscovered texts and big systems, when authority (classical, religious, scholastic) often competed with what the eye and hand could verify. His line is a rebuke to bookish certainty and a warning to creatives and thinkers alike: the world isn’t obliged to complete your ideas. If your conclusion collapses, don’t blame experience for being “wrong.” Blame your expectation for being lazy.