Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.

Christ will never be found the Savior of those who know nothing of following His example. Saving faith and real converting grace will always produce some conformity to the image of Jesus (Col. 3:10).

Genuine sanctification is a thing that can be seen.

Practical sciences proceed by building up; theoretical science by resolving into components

Cats were not, in her experience, an animal with much soul. Prosaic, practical little creatures as a general rule. It would suit her very well to be thought catlike.

I’m very practical. What I’m interested in is working and being around people I want to learn from.

Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.

A government, at bottom, is nothing more than a gang of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men … Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to describe the best as the common enemy of all decent citizens.

valThe value of an idea lies in the using of it

Their demands were limited and practical, and for that reasonthey successfully initiated a movement that led in the end to yet undreamt-of liberties for all.

He who criticizes, be he ever so honest, must suggest a practical remedy or he soon descends from the height of a critic to the level of a common scold.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.

I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.

To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy’s power to frustrate it.

I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

You throw batting practice, you warm up pitchers, you sit and cheer. You do whatever you have to do to stay on the team.

No political party can possibly lead a great revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary theory and knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the practical movement.

Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.

I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.

Gradually, … the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.