It's not an experiment if you know it's going to work.

The merchant of vision, Jeff Bezos, once declared with piercing insight: “It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.” In this simple but profound saying, he reminds us that true experimentation is born of uncertainty, of daring, of walking into the unknown where failure is as likely as triumph. To know the outcome before you begin is not courage, but mere repetition. The experiment, by its very essence, demands risk.

For progress has never sprung from certainty. The explorers who crossed oceans, the inventors who bent nature to new forms, the thinkers who shattered old truths—all stepped into darkness without guarantee. Their greatness lay not in safety, but in their willingness to face the abyss of the unknown. Thus, Bezos echoes the eternal law: that all genuine innovation requires the humility to accept failure as teacher, and the audacity to try where success is not assured.

To fear failure is to chain the spirit. The one who only acts when the path is secure will never discover new lands, but will circle endlessly within the old. But the one who embraces the true experiment dares to lose, and in daring, finds horizons unseen. Each failure becomes a stepping stone, each risk an opening of the mind, until at last the impossible is achieved.

This wisdom is not for science and business alone, but for life itself. Friendships, love, faith—all are experiments, for we step into them not knowing what they will yield. To demand certainty before acting is to rob life of its beauty. The soul grows not in safety, but in trial; not in knowing, but in seeking.

So let this truth be carried forward: honor the experiment, for it is the forge of discovery. Do not seek only what you know will succeed, for that is not growth but stagnation. Instead, embrace the unknown with courage, for in the crucible of uncertainty lies the birth of greatness. Remember always—the bold do not wait for certainty, they create it through the fire of trial.