quotations about experience
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Vivian Grey
From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1825
Experience, the universal Mother of Sciences.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Experience is ... the mirror of Intelligence,
Time's open book and Life's philosophy
Sent to dispel the night of Ignorance.
JAMES WOODMANSEE
Wrinkles from the Brow of Experience and Other Poems
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Texts & Pretexts
I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Experience
That considered judgment of mankind upon such and such a troubling matter, of sex, of property, or of political right, is anchored or rooted in eternity. There comes a day when by some one experience he is startled out of that morning dream. It is not the first death, perhaps, that strikes him, nor the first loss--no, not even, perhaps, the first discovery that human affection also passes (though that should be for every man the deepest lesson of all). What wakes him to the reality which is for some dreadful, for others august, and for the faithful divine, is always an accident. One death, one change, one loss, among so many, unseals his judgment, and he sees thenceforward, nay, often from one particular moment upon which he can put his finger, the doom which lies upon all things whatsoever that live by a material change.
HILAIRE BELLOC
On Something
To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men; but to many they are of little use, and to some they are none.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Experience is retrospect knowledge.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
Problems of Life and Mind
Experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
The Collected Essays
To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Change Your Brain