“A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."”
Variant: A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.
Source: Interview in The Daily Nexus (5 April 2000), reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt
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Douglas Adams 317
English writer and humorist 1952–2001Related quotes

1974 speech, in Voices of Multicultural America: Notable Speeches Delivered by African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans, 1790-1995 by Deborah Gillan Straub

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged

as quoted by [Steven Chu and Charles H. Townes, Biographical Memoirs V.83, National Academies Press, 2003, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10830, 0-309-08699-X, 201]

Variant: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose