Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes

With wisdom fraught; not such as books, but such as practice taught.

A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant

However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man. Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?

Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

Here, class attendance is expected and students are required to take notes, which they are tested on. What is missing, it seems to me, is the use of knowledge, the practical training.

There's a world of difference . . . between that information to which we now presumably have access by way of computers, libraries, and the rest of it, great stockpiles of data, and the knowledge that people have in their bones by which they do good work and live good lives.

While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking than if you were in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.

A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.

It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.

Action without study fatal. Study without action is futile.

There is only one way to learn. It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.

Education without execution is extinction

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.

As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.

No amount of reading and intelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience.

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

But isn't the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn't? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around - walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.

Only ... from personal experience [can a man] take the necessary measures without a preliminary process of trial and error.

Knowledge must come through action.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them.