“Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.”

— Virginia Woolf

Sometimes ascribed to Virginia Woolf, but it appeared as early as 1854 in Anna Jameson's A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories and Fancies, where it is ascribed to William Wordsworth.
Misattributed

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Virginia Woolf382

English writer 1882–1941

Related quotes

“Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Attributed by Anna Jameson in her A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories and Fancies (1854).

“Arrest each unloving thought; stamp out each critical action, and teach yourself to love all beings - not in theory but in deed and in truth.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: "Discipleship in the New Age" (1944), p. 475

“Action without theory is reckless; theory without action is worthless.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

(speech at Center for Popular Economics, Summer Institute), 2006-07-27

“Action without thought is blind and thought without action is a disease. We must avoid overthinking.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 242

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

This expression is widely misattributed to Emerson in journalism, tweets, and memes on the internet. This quotation in an earlier phrasing of Jared Eliot's statement “It used to be the Saying of an old Man, That an Ounce of Experience is better than a Pound of Science.” (Essays upon Field Husbandry, 1748; quotation reprinted in "Jared Eliot, Minister, Physician, Farmer" by Rodney H. True. Agricultural History Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1928) https://www.jstor.org/stable/3739311, p199). The quote has also been misattributed to Friedrich Engels, a claim possibly originating from the 1975 book The Strange Case of Victor Grayson by Reg Groves ( link http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Udk7LCxtvugJ:socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2010_05_02_archive.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) <br class="br">Misattributed