What makes Aristotle's observation so penetrating is that he's not merely saying practice makes perfect—he's identifying *when* practice matters most, and why. A habit formed at twenty carries a different weight than one formed at forty, not because young brains are inherently superior, but because habits compound across decades, becoming the invisible architecture of who we become. Consider someone who learns to read difficult books as a teenager versus someone who tries to develop the same habit at fifty: the younger reader accumulates thousands of hours of comprehension and confidence, while the older learner fights against established preferences and limited time. Aristotle understood that youth isn't valuable because it's easier to change then—it's valuable because change, once made, has the longest distance to travel through the rest of a life.