Life & Wisdom Quote by Shelby Foote

Foote is smuggling a whole philosophy of craft into a sentence that sounds almost folksy. He grants the romance of failure - the tactile education of doing something wrong, sitting with it, and earning the correction. That first clause flatters the solitary striver, the writer alone with his drafts, the historian alone with his sources. But the pivot is where the real intent lives: he calls feedback a "shortcut", not a crutch. In other words, pride in self-discovery is fine, but pride can also be expensive.

The subtext is anti-mystique. Foote, best known to many as the courtly raconteur of Ken Burns's Civil War, understood that mastery is less revelation than revision. "Someone else" isn't an authority descending from on high; it's an editor, a teacher, a sharp-eyed peer - the social infrastructure behind any polished voice. By framing correction as efficiency rather than ego injury, he quietly reframes critique as respect for your time and your aims. You still make the mistake; you just don't have to build a shrine to it.

Context matters because Foote came up in a mid-century literary culture that prized the singular genius while relying heavily on gatekeepers: magazines, editors, workshop talk, the kind of informal apprenticeship men rarely named. His line splits the difference. Learn the hard way if you must, but don't fetishize struggle. The point isn't suffering; it's getting better.