"Elements of Success," Speech at Spencerian Business College, Washington, D.C. (29 July 1869); in President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial (1881) by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 326 http://books.google.com/books?id=rA4XAAAAYAAJ
1860s
Variant: A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. ”
“A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.”
Saturday Review (1859)
1850s
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”
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)
Misattributed
“An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.”
As quoted in his obituary by Maynard Smith http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/maynardsmith/pdf/1965.pdf in Nature 206 (1965), p. 239
“A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.”
note for "a future fable", "Such a Phrase as Drifts Through Dreams", Holiday Magazine; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances
“6495. An Ounce of Wit that's bought,
Is worth a Pound that's taught.”
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1745) : An ounce of wit that is bought, Is worth a pound that is taught.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
(, 1928)”
Source: Works of Elbert Hubbard
“An old truth asserts that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Speech at the 49th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (1994)
“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!”
Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
“Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”
General sources
Source: Letter to Joseph Benson (7 November 1768); published in The Letters of John Wesley (1915) edited by George Eayrs
