Experience

I can only think of one experience that might exceed in interest a few hours spent under water and that would be a journey to Mars.
~ Charles William ("Will") Beebe, Half Mile Down (1934).

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all that man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
~ William Blake, The Price of Experience (1797).

The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own.
~ Bill Bradley

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.
~ William Ellery Channing, in Dr. Channing's Note-book (1887). Memory

A hat not much the worse for wear.
~ William Cowper, The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1782).

Our knowledge, our attitudes, and our actions are based to a very large extent on samples.
~ William Gemmell Cochran, Sampling Techniques (1952).

Does experience help? No! Not if we are doing the wrong things.
~ W. Edwards Deming

Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory there is no learning.
~ W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics For Industry, Government & Education, 2nd ed. (1993). Chapter 4. A System of Profound Knowledge

Everything that I experience or could experience constitutes (a nexus or system). Life is a process which is connected into a whole through a structural system which begins and ends in time.
~ Wilhelm Dilthey

Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
~ William Orville Douglas

These new experiences of odor, sound, touch, sight, perfume, of songs and varied display -- fill the days and the introspective thoughts of youth and become the irresistible provocatives of love.
~ William James "Will" Durant

I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anybody.
~ William Faulkner (from an interview in 1962), in Faulkner at West Point (1964).

Experience seems to be the only thing of any value that's widely distributed.
~ William Feather

Reach in and grab all the hurt you can. Experience it fully like a child. Then, when the hurt is fully experienced, it disappears.
~ Bill Ferguson

Sleep -- the most beautiful experience in life -- except drink.
~ W.C. Fields

We are experiencing the early days of a revolution . . . that will be long-lived and widespread.
~ Bill Gates

Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced.
~ William Glasser, M.D., The Quality School (1990).

The paranormal is really another word for Exceptional Human Experience which includes all types of encounter-type, near-death, and psychic phenomena.
~ Dennis William Hauck, in OMNI's Prime Time Live (Interview; 15 October 1996). High Strangeness

The world would be consistent without God; it would also be consistent with God; whichever hypothesis a man adopts will fit experience equally well.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912).

I need to exist as an actor. . . . There is frustration. But that's not my primary experience. The primary experience is, "Today I'm gonna go try." When I get it, it feels wonderful. But even trying feels good.
~ William Hurt, The Associated Press (6 November 2002). Hurt Portrays Turncoat on CBS

Experience is a good teacher, but her fees are very high.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true.
~ William James, from The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel To 'Pragmatism' (1909). III. Humanism and Truth

Experience . . . has ways of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Pragmatism's Conception of Truth

Experience is a process that continually gives us new material to digest. We handle this intellectually by the mass of beliefs of which we find ourselves already possessed, assimilating, rejecting, or rearranging in different degrees.
~ William James, from The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel To 'Pragmatism' (1909). III. Humanism and Truth

. . . I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Conclusions

If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Religion and Neurology

[O]wing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one.
~ William James, from The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel To 'Pragmatism' (1909). III. Humanism and Truth

The only experience that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfilment we can speak of is the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
~ William James, in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (1904). A World of Pure Experience, IV. Substitution

There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). What Pragmatism Means

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Mysticism

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
~ William James, in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (1904). A World of Pure Experience, I. Radical Empiricism

I've played all kinds of places, laid all kinds of girls.
~ Billy Joel

There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

Experience is the great teacher; unfortunately, experience leaves mental scars, and scar tissue contracts.
~ William James Mayo, M.D., JAMA (1921). In the time of Henry Jacob Bigelow

You play the way you practice.
~ William J. McMinn

Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience there and then gone.
~ Bill Moyers, in The New York Times (3 January 1982).

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888).

The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888).

The important thing is to make the lesson of each case tell on your education. The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.
~ William Osler (address given at the closing exercises of the Army Medical School, Washington DC; 28 February 1894), in The Medical News (24 March 1894). The Army Surgeon

Experience is a tough teacher. She gives the test first and the lesson after.
~ William H. Ottley

I have gained my experience.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act IV, scene i

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

Unless experience be a jewel.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

After experience taught me that all the ordinary
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain. . . .
~ William De Witt (W.D.) Snodgrass, from Selected Poems 1957-1987 (1987). After Experience Taught Me

I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.
~ William Stafford

I have had in Twenty Years Experience, enough of the Uncertainty of Princes, the Caprices of Fortune, the Corruption of Ministers, the Violence of Factions, the Unsteddyness of Counsels, and the Infidelity of Friends; Nor do I think the rest of my Life enough to make any new Experiments.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Truth that is not experienced is no better than error, and may be fully as dangerous.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer, The Root of the Righteous (1955). Chapter 15: Our Enemy Contentment

Experience is food for the brain.
~ Bill Watterson, Speech at Kenyon College Commencement, Gambier, Ohio (20 May 1990). Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled

We cannot observe external things without some degree of Thought; nor can we reflect upon our Thoughts, without being influenced in the course of our reflection by the Things which we have observed.
~ William Whewell, The Elements of Morality (1856). Book I. Chapter I, The Reason

Vices when ridiculed, experience says,
First lose that horror which they ought to raise,
Grow by degrees approved, and almost aim at praise.
~ William Whitehead, On Ridicule (1743)

Some souls there are that needs must taste
Of wrong, ere choosing right;
We should not call those years a waste
Which led us to the light.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Custer and Other Poems (1896). Life

Experience is the key to greatness.
~ Arthur Williams

We learn from experience. A man never wakes up his second baby just to see it smile.
~ Grace Williams

The dance of the body, the movement of the voice, the sounds of instruments are, like colours, forms and patterns, means of transmitting our experience in so powerful a way that the experience can be literally lived by others . . . it is a physical experience as real as any other.
~ Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (1961). The Creative Mind

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams

Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
~ Earl Wilson

The patterns had voices for one
who saw them in high perspective
and now they are symbolic of your outlook on life,
pages in the book of your experience.
~ Gill Robb Wilson, from The Airman's World (1957). Patterns

If I ever had an out-of-body experience -- I'd try to come back to a different one.
~ Tom Wilson, Ziggy

What this country needs is a credit card for charging things to experience.
~ Tom Wilson, Ziggy