“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. ”

— James A. Garfield

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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James A. Garfield 129

American politician, 20th President of the United States (i… 1831–1881

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“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

"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 gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Saturday Review (1859)
1850s

“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)
Misattributed

“An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

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.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

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.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

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)