The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually fear you will make one.
Hubbard captures something subtler than "don't be afraid of failure"—he's pointing out that fear of mistakes actually *becomes* the mistake itself, a kind of recursive trap. The paralysis of caution consumes more of your life than any single stumble ever could. Consider the person who avoids asking for a raise because they fear the awkwardness of the conversation; in protecting themselves from one possible rejection, they've already accepted years of underpayment. The wisdom here is recognizing that perfectionism masquerades as prudence when really it's just expensive cowardice.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca