"There’s a time for daring and there’s a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for."

“There’s a time for daring and there’s a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.” This quote was said by Mr. Keating, the English teacher in “Dead Poet’s Society”. This quote speaks to me more than the others from the “Dead Poet’s Society”. It can mean something different to anyone who reads it but to me it means one thing. When I hear this quote, I think of being my own person, but a person who knows how to react to life. There are many lessons we must learn in school but they don’t make us wise, experience does. We must learn when it is time to be daring or cautious from our own experience. The first time something happens you are not going to know the correct way to react, but if you learn from that and make the right decision next time, you are becoming wise. If you make a mistake and the situation recurs but you didn’t learn from the first time then you aren’t wise.   

Life calls for quick reactions and sometimes we react the wrong way. In the “Dead Poet’s Society”, Mr. Keating speaks using this quote after a daring attempt which gets one of the boys in serious trouble. In this case Mr. Keating feels that he should have been more cautious but he is going to have to learn from his mistake and move on with his life and not do it again. In almost all of our lives we have a situation we must face where we must decide to be daring or cautious. The boys in the movie also had to make a choice, which they couldn’t do on their own before being taught by Mr. Keating. This quote as a whole means we must make decisions, sometimes the decisions can be harder to make, but we must make them and we must learn from them so we can one day become wise. One time I had to make a quick decision when someone asked me a question but I made the wrong choice. Instead of just forgetting everything, I made a mental note of them so the next time I had a similar situation I could make the right decision.