.. that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.
Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.
Geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; surgery better in investigating organiation than in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in science adds something to its practical applicabilities.
Knowing something and acting on that knowledge in a political setting are two different things…. Finally the markets come and hit you over the head.
The whole intention of empirical economics is to force theory down to Earth.
A think may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask. What's in it for me?
What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference could be traced, then … all dispute is idle.
The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.
Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain "above the fray" only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.
It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.
Establishing the two Eids as official holidays will carry important practical and symbolic significance.
It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
If the vast and the spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the moral.
It is easier to take a position in the abstract than when it hits home.
The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
