In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

Bill Vaughan (1915–1977) was an American newspaper columnist known for wry, aphoristic observations about everyday life, often framed in the language of sports and common experience. This quip belongs to that mid‑20th‑century newspaper-humor tradition in which “life lessons” are delivered as punchy one-liners suitable for syndication and reprinting in quote columns. The line uses the familiar idea of an “undefeated season” to evoke social and psychological pressure: the more perfect your record appears, the more anxious you become about preserving it. While the saying is widely attributed to Vaughan in quotation collections, I cannot confidently identify the specific column, date, or publication in which it first appeared.

The remark argues for the liberating value of early failure. By losing early—making mistakes, being embarrassed, falling short—you puncture the illusion that you must be flawless, and you stop organizing your life around protecting an image of perfection. The “undefeated season” metaphor captures how success can become a trap: once you’re seen (or see yourself) as someone who never loses, every new challenge carries the added burden of preserving that identity. Vaughan’s humor points to a serious insight: resilience and experimentation are easier when you accept setbacks as normal, and progress often accelerates once the fear of the first loss is gone.