Theory vs. Practice, Theory vs Practice Quotes

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.

The slogan that agriculture is the backbone of the nation still remains in theory and not in practice.

Economists are people who wonder if what works in reality can also work in theory.

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.

On Pragmatism: It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice

There are so many things which you do not have to consider if you are developing and studying a theory in a classroom. It is useful to deal with theories in developing youthful minds, for later they will deal with facts and profit by what they have learned of other men's thoughts, but it is quite different to be faced with actual situations that have to be met in one way or another in a given period of time.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.

Theory can leave questions unanswered, but practice has to come up with something.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

I was always a data guy, not a theorist. Theorists can maintain total purity. The data are always messy.

I need more raw experience. I've read and watched a lot of things, but I haven't done a lot of things.

We are a moderate, pragmatic people, more comfortable with practice than theory.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

Most of the suspicion of intellectuals in politics springs from the belief, not entirely false, that, owing to a strong desire to see life in some simple, symmetrical fashion, they put too much faith in the beneficent results of applying directly to life conclusions obtained by operations in some theoretical sphere.

Typically, a crusade begins when some substantial discrepancy is found between the world as they envision it and the world as it exists. To the anointed, it seems to follow, as the night follows the day, that reality must be brought into line with their vision. Logically, one might just as readily conclude that it is the theory which needs to be brought into line with reality. But that possibility is seldom given much consideration. The fact that reality has survived the test of time and experience, while the viability of their vision has yet to be proven in practice, is likewise seldom given much attention.

If you read books forever and ever, they will never replace what really counts - that's practical experience.

.. that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

Studying economics is not a good preparation for dealing with it.

In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.

Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.

A symptom of the revolution: When we state something is impossible in theory, but then change our minds when we discover that it is possible in practice.