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

— Fausto Cercignani

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Fausto Cercignani 65

Italian scholar, essayist and poet 1941

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“All this is very good in theory, but in practice, you take a piece of iron, wind a wire around it, then plug the wire in. The core gets hot, the wires smoke, and the fuse blows. So you see, there are practical limitations to theory.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

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“Paradoxes often arise because theory routinely refuses to be subordinate to reality.”

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Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

Attributed in Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile - Things that Gain From Disorder (2012), p. 213.
The earliest known appearance of this quote in print is Walter J. Savitch, Pascal: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming (1984), where it is attributed as a "remark overheard at a computer science conference". It circulated as an anonymous saying for more than ten years before attributions to Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut and Yogi Berra began to appear (and later still to various others).
Disputed, Misattributed

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”

Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut (1953–1994) Dutch computer scientist

The earliest known appearance in print of this quote is Benjamin Brewster in the October 1881 - June 1882 issue of "The Yale Literary Magazine." Brewster asks, "What does his lucid explanation amount to but this, that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is?" See page 202. https://books.google.com/books?id=iJ9MAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&vq=%22no+difference%22#v=onepage&q&f=false It has also been attributed by Doug Rosenberg and Matt Stephens (2007) Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UMLTheory and Practice p. xxvii as well as Walter J. Savitch, Pascal: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming (1984), where it is attributed as a "remark overheard at a computer science conference". It circulated as an anonymous saying for more than ten years before attributions to van de Snepscheut and Yogi Berra began to appear (and later still to various others).
Misattributed

“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972)

“A theory, is a body of knowledge, that is supportive of, and explanative of facts. Scientific laws are included within a theory, facts are included within a theory, that's why you have the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity. There is no concept in creationism, which meets any of the qualifications of a scientific theory, none. You have no facts, you have no laws, you have no evidence, you have no explanative power. All you have, is whatever science can't explain, you pretend you can.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Reason Rally Ra Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isrST6wOUJA (March 28, 2012)

“The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 8
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

“Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

to Edwin L. James of the New York Times (1928)
1920s

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

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Fausto Cercignani 65

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