Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.

Experience is a keen teacher;

The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view

Experience is the teacher of all things.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.

Experience can be a very bad teacher, indeed, or not teacher at all. It is like the silly phrase, “Practice makes perfect.” In most cases, practice merely confirms us in our errors, and the longer we do something the wrong way - that is, without enlightenment and instruction- the more fixed we become in our folly.

For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.

Experience is the best teacher, and the worst experiences teach the best lessons.

To sum up, while we do not seek to instruct the reader, we should feel rewarded for our efforts if we can persuade him to practice an exercise at which we are a master: to laugh at oneself. No progress is possible in the acquisition of objective knowledge without this self-critical irony.

Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another.

Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation – a water main or an electric cable is being repaired – and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there.

All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Does teaching mean talking or a lecture?” rich dad asked. “Well, yes,” I replied. “That’s how they teach you in school,” he said, smiling. “But that is not how life teaches you, and I would say that life is the best teacher of all. Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying, ‘Wake up. There’s something I want you to learn.

Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast.