Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

The saying frames daunting tasks as “mountains” whose apparent magnitude is often a product of distance, fear, and imagination. Only after sustained effort—reaching “the top”—can one judge the true scale of the difficulty, which frequently proves smaller than anticipated. It also implies a moral about humility and perspective: success can reveal that obstacles were not as insurmountable as they seemed, and that our earlier self-doubt inflated them. In leadership or public service, the line encourages perseverance and warns against premature assessments that discourage action before experience has supplied a clearer view.