Practice Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once ever year.... My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. I employs about an hour of my time....

John Quincy Adams

Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!

Jean-Baptiste Say

The story of a theory's failure often strikes readers as sad and unsatisfying. Since science thrives on self-correction, we who practice this most challenging of human arts do not share such a feeling. We may be unhappy if a favored hypothesis loses or chagrined if theories that we proposed prove inadequate. But refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment, even when […] no new and comprehensive theory has yet filled the void.

Stephen Jay Gould

By his own experience of God and his estimate of man, by his emphasis upon and practice of brotherhood, by his repudiation of hatred and violence, while attacking with audacity deeply entrenched inequities, and by his vicarious suffering on the cross, Jesus awakens, challenges and inspires us to take up the cross and follow in his sacrificially redemptive steps. Thus we are saved and thus society must be redeemed.

Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.

Many people of various beliefs and faiths have written about the practice of the presence of God, and all speak of the happiness they receive from being in His presence. So it is no wonder that the Sufi also, should he wish to speak of it, should testify to similar happiness. He does not claim to a greater happiness than his fellow men because he is a human being and subject to all the shortcomings of mankind. But at the same time others can decide about his happiness better even than his words can tell it. The happiness which is experienced in God has no equal in anything in the world, however precious it may be, and everyone who experiences it will realize the same.

In the practice of any craft, we are less concerned with the quantity of the product than with its quality, and less concerned with the product than with the artisan.

Lanza del Vasto

A person has to be strong in life. A person must practice strength, even if they don't feel it.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

If you refuse to take account of theory, then you have forgotten that practice is often an offspring of theory.

Fausto Cercignani

How are you on the high wire?
Wire walking? It's simple. Any child of ten can do it—with about fourteen years practice.

Michael Kurland

As long as we think our lives are not good enough (materially), we will not have happiness. As soon as we realize our lives are good enough, happiness immediately appears. That is the practice of contentment.

You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.

Practice self-discipline and keep emotions under control. Good judgment and common sense are essential.

A minimum of comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue.

Patrice Lumumba

If a man's public record be a clear one, if he has kept his pledges before the world, I do not inquire what his private life may have been. I judge a man by his convictions of right, for a man's principles are the result of his better judgment, whilst his practice is influenced by his associations.

Susan B. Anthony

Our cricket was completely uninhibited by tactical thoughts or any other subtleties. We were never coached, all our practice came from playing in the streets of Signal Hill, where we lived, and some of us would get hauled off to jail by the police if we were caught. Playing in the street was an offence for us.

Basil D'Oliveira

There is timing in everything. Timing in strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice.

Miyamoto Musashi

Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.

Walter Lippmann

Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.

William S. Burroughs

I once had a patient who used to practice the most horrible tortures on himself, and when I asked him why he did such things, he said, 'Why before the world does them.' I asked him then, 'Why not wait and see what the world will do?' and he said, 'Don't you see? It always come at last, but this way at least I am master of my own destruction.

Joanne Greenberg

I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply - side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.

All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more 'natural' and 'ingrained' they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person.

Sonja Lyubomirsky

The role of officials today is to upset the laws, to stir up lawsuits, to annul agreements, to devise delays, to suppress the truth, to encourage falsehood, to follow profit, to sell justice, to attend closely to exacting money, to practice cunning.