A Quote by Samuel Smiles

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

Samuel Smiles

Quote Topics

Experience Wisdom Discipline Far Go Instruction Learned Life Nature Only Practical Real Real Life Remain School Theory Useful Without

Quote Author

Samuel Smiles
Scottish - Author
December 23, 1812 - April 16, 1904

A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.

Maurice Allais

I believe in education, but I think the balance has to be right between theory and practical experience. I think from secondary school onwards it should be more about preparing you for life and work in the real world.

Kano

Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed.

Plutarch

Communists should set an example in being practical as well as far-sighted. For only by being practical can they fulfil the appointed tasks, and only far-sightedness can prevent them from losing their bearings in the march forward.

Mao Zedong

Phronimos, possessing practical wisdom . But the only virtue special to a ruler is practical wisdom; all the others must be possessed, so it seems, both by rulers and ruled. The virtue of a person being ruled is not practical wisdom but correct opinion; he is rather like a person who makes the pipes, while the ruler is the one who can play them.

Aristotle

It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward?

David Brooks

Your life is a learning process - you can only become wiser from learning. Sometimes you might have to attract making a painful mistake to learn something important, but after the mistake you have far greater wisdom. Wisdom cannot be bought with money - it can only be acquired through living life. With wisdom comes strength, courage, knowing, and an ever-increasing peace.

Rhonda Byrne

Experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there's a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that's the experience that's already lived by others. I'm not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did.

Rza

Experience by itself teaches nothing... Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.

W. Edwards Deming

In the deep, unwritten wisdom of life there are many things to be learned that cannot be taught. We never know them by hearing them spoken, but we grow into them by experience and recognize them through understanding. Understanding is a great experience in itself, but it does not come through instruction.

Anthony Hope

Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

M. Scott Peck

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Edith Wharton

Remember, there are no real failures in life, only results. There are no true tragedies, only lessons. And there are no problems, only opportunities waiting to be recognized as solutions by the person of wisdom.

Robin Sharma

Whatever you've learned becomes truly useful to you only once it has become second nature.

Guthrie Govan

Without faith in his own judgment no man can go very far in this game. That is about all I have learned - to study general conditions, to take a position and stick to it. I can wait without a twinge of impatience. I can see a setback without being shaken, knowing that it is only temporary.