“In war, theory is all right so far as general principles are concerned; but in reducing general principles to practice there will always be danger. Theory and practice are the axis about which the sphere of accomplishment revolves.”

—  Napoleon I of France

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In war, theory is all right so far as general principles are concerned; but in reducing general principles to practice …" by Napoleon I of France?
Napoleon I of France photo
Napoleon I of France 259
French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French 1769–1821

Related quotes

“The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), Chapter 2.

William H. Starbuck photo

“The history of organization theory contrasts with the history of managerial thought. When people began to compose texts about organized activities, between 2,000 and 3,000 years before the Christian era (BCE), they focused on managerial practices rather than on organizations as such. Several writers proposed general principles for managerial practice before 1000 BCE, so one can say that theories about managing have existed for at least 3000 years. However, these writings often said nothing about the organizational contexts in which managing was to occur. When the writers did make statements about organizations, they did not generalize. They wrote about specific organizations.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Source: "The Origins of Organizational Theory," 2005, p. 143

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“The practice of Pictorial Photography cannot be taught by a Kindergarten system; the mere comparison with typical examples must be accompanied with a right understanding of underlying principles and theory.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, p. 1

William John Macquorn Rankine photo

“Mechanical knowledge may… be distinguished into three kinds; purely scientific knowledge, purely practical knowledge, and that intermediate kind of knowledge which relates to the application of scientific principles to practical purposes, and which arises from understanding the harmony of theory and practice.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

“Thus, there exist models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relations or „forces‟ between them. It seems legitimate to ask for a theory, not of systems of a more or less special kind, but of universal principles applying to systems in general. In this way, we postulate a new discipline called General Systems Theory. Its subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles, which are valid for „systems‟ in general.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 32

Michel Henry photo

“Because practice is subjective, theory which is always the theory of an object, can't access to the reality of this practice, what it is in itself, but only represent it, in such a way that this representation lets out of itself the real being of practice, the effectivity of the doing. Theory does nothing.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Marx I. une philosophie de la réalité, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 353
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Parce que la pratique est subjective, la théorie qui est toujours la théorie d’un objet, ne peut atteindre la réalité de cette pratique, ce qu’elle est en elle-même, sa subjectivité précisément, mais seulement se la représenter, de telle manière que cette représentation laisse hors d’elle l’être réel de la pratique, l’effectivité du faire. La théorie ne fait rien.

Kenneth Arrow photo

“Certainly, there is no general principle that prevents the creation of an economic theory based on other hypotheses than that of rationality.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

1970s-1980s, "Rationality of Self and Others in an Economic System", 1986

Adam Ferguson photo

“Theory consists in referring particular operations to the principles, or general laws, under which they are comprehended; or in referring particular effects to the causes from which they proceed.”

Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) Scottish philosopher and historian

Introduction, Section IV, Of Theory, p. 7.
Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“I should be far more concerned about the general attitude of a candidate toward present day problems and his own inward desire to get practical needs attended to in a practical way.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Fireside Chat in the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards (1938)
Context: I certainly would not indicate a preference in a State primary merely because a candidate, otherwise liberal in outlook, had conscientiously differed with me on any single issue. I should be far more concerned about the general attitude of a candidate toward present day problems and his own inward desire to get practical needs attended to in a practical way. We all know that progress may be blocked by outspoken reactionaries and also by those who say "yes" to a progressive objective, but who always find some reason to oppose any specific proposal to gain that objective. I call that type of candidate a "yes, but" fellow.

“The most general form of systems theory is a set of logical or mathematical statements about all conceptual systems. A subset of this concerns all concrete systems. A subsubset concerns the very special and very important living systems, i. e., general living systems theory.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living systems, 1978, p. 41

Related topics