A collection of quotes for entrepreneurs curated in May 2026 around a theme of theory and practice: their distinct value, differences, and how each informs the other.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Curated in May 2026
I curate these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same source for context.
My theme for this month’s “Quotes for Entrepreneurs” is theory and practice: their distinct value, differences, and how each informs the other.
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“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is.”
Benjamin Brewster
I originally curated this in July 2019 and decided to use it as a theme for this month’s quotes.
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“One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.”
George E. P. Box in “Science and Statistics” (1976)
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“Practice is the exercise of an art or the application of a science. Theory is knowledge. Each presupposes and is dependent on the other. Theory is dependent on practice; it is a generalization of the principles on which practice proceeds. But there is no practice without theory: a man of practice must always know something, however little, of what he does and the outcome he intends.”
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (condensed from in Metaphysics of William Hamilton (1872) by Francis Bowen
Here is a longer excerpt for context (italics in original rendered as bold)
“The terms theory and theoretical are properly used in opposition to the terms practice and practical. […]
Practice is the exercise of an art, or the application of a science. […] It is not every one who is able to apply all he knows ; there being required, over and above knowledge, a certain dexterity and skill.
Theory, on the contrary, is mere knowledge or science.
There is a distinction, but no opposition, between theory and practice; each to a certain extent supposes the other. On the one hand theory is dependent on practice; practice must have preceded theory ; for theory being only a generalization of the principles on which practice proceeds, these must originally have been taken out of, or abstracted from, practice.
On the other hand, this is true only to a certain extent; for there is no practice without a theory. The man of practice must have always known something, however little, of what he did, of what he intended to do, and of the means by which his intention was to be carried into effect. He was, therefore, not wholly ignorant of the principles of his procedure ; he was a limited, he was, in some degree, an unconscious, theorist. As he proceeded, however, in his practice, and reflected on his performance, his theory acquired greater clearness and extension, so that he became at last distinctly conscious of what he did, and could give, to himself and others, an account of his procedure.
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (condensed from in Metaphysics of William Hamilton (1872) by Francis Bowen
This precedes the concept of “theory-in-use” developed by Donald Schon and Chris Argyris (See for example their “Theory in Practice“) “or the concept of “tacit knowledge” that informs our practice even when we don’t voice it directly.
I believe that effective teams share both a set of agreed-upon practices (at least at the level of working consensus) and shared mental models, mental maps, and theories-in-use. I have seen a lot of focus on leveraging cognitive task analysis to determine experts’ mental models and guide the training of novices and journeymen in a discipline. I think it may also be used to help teams reach a working consensus on shared mental models and shared practices.
In addition, customers always have a “theory-in-use” of why they are doing something or how a tool or process should work. They are not a blank slate waiting for you to bring them fire. The challenge is to ask the questions that unlock how they currently view their need or challenge so that you can anchor your explanation in their current understanding.
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“The great tragedy of science–the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Huxley
Also applies to product hypotheses, better to uncover disconfirming facts pre-launch with conversations and low fidelity demos than post-launch.
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“The specific triumph of the technical imagination rested on the ability to dissociate lifting power from the arm and create a crane: to dissociate work from the action of men and animals and create the water-mill: to dissociate light from the combustion of wood and oil and create the electric lamp.”
Lewis Mumford in “Technics and Civilization” (1934)
The paragraph the immediately precedes this on make an interesting observation:
“Circular motion, one of the most useful and frequent attributes of a fully developed machine is, curiously, one of the least observable motions in nature: even the stars do not describe a circular course, and except for the rotifers, man himself, in occasional dances and handsprings, is the chief exponent of rotary motion.”
Lewis Mumford in “Technics and Civilization” (1934)
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“AI personalities and their owners should be subjected to fiduciary duty when they interact with users.
Fiduciary duty is a legal concept applying to an actor who is in a relationship of trust with another and whose position involves superior knowledge or skill. Classic examples include lawyers acting for clients, administrators of a legal trust acting for beneficiaries, executors for heirs, corporate directors for shareholders, and members of a partnership for one another.
A fiduciary relationship creates a duty to act in the beneficiary’s interest, to act in good faith, and to use reasonable skill and diligence. It includes—important in this context—a duty of confidentiality, with all information relating to the relationship kept confidential and private.”
Glenn Harlan Reynolds in “Don’t Stand So Close to ChatGPT” (May-3-2026) an opinion piece in the WSJ.
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“Space launch was a clear case where there was a large difference in efficiency between what was possible and what was done in practice before SpaceX. A large part of that was due to everything being locked in to what (just barely) already worked, with huge risk aversion. With national prestige or a half billion dollar geosync satellite on the line, speculative engineering ideas that might result in a public debacle were not welcome.
When failure is not an option, success can stay very expensive. You need to experiment to improve, and that fundamentally means being comfortable with failure. If you know it is going to work, it isn’t an experiment.
I have long believed that nuclear power today is in precisely the same state as space launch two decades ago, but the even more pressing question now is if semiconductor fabrication might also be.
On the one hand, Moore’s Law has been a sequence of heroic miracles of technology at the wafer fabrication level, grinding out hundreds of compounding small improvements.
On the other hand, fabs are “too big to fail”, and there are elements of extreme conservatism at play. Intel’s “Copy exactly!” fab development exemplifies that mindset – instead of every new building being an opportunity to explore and optimize processes, it was deemed more valuable to just replicate.
While each individual machine may be straining against physical limits of technology, it is possible that the systems orchestrating them all together could be far from optimal.
The explore / exploit axis is fundamental to all decision making, but human risk avoidance probably biases away from optimal exploration.”
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“Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention.”
Louis Pasteur
Inaugural Address as newly appointed Professor and Dean (Sep 1854) at the opening of the new Faculté des Sciences at Lille (7 Dec 1854). In René Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, translated by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire (1919).
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“Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely the best teacher, but the only possible teacher. There is no war between theory and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the theory should supplement the practice and not precede it.”
Charles Kettering in Speech “Lap-Welding Students to Life” collected in “Prophet of Progress: Prophet of Progress: Selections from the Speeches of Charles F. Kettering” Edited by T. A. Boyd
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“Like body and soul, theory and practice are one, and like body and soul they are for the most part at loggerheads.”
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
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“Everyone talks about speed.
Faster execution, tighter loops, more opportunities, founders edging to their limits.Push, push, push.
Pause. Breathe.
The speed at which founders move is critical to gain initial momentum. But it’s important to recognize that most founders end up in a marathon, not a sprint.
Saying this to founders who are already years deep in hardcore mode, anxious that they should still speed up.
In a marathon, persistence matters more than speed; discipline beats intensity, and smart energy planning to operate for 5-7 years becomes the ultimate moat.
Speed up when you have to, slow down when you can.”
Tom Ogrodzki (LinkedIn) May-9-2026 tweet
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“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. In the course of sorting and setting down of my memories I have learned that these advantages are usually independent of one’s merits, and that I probably owe my happy old age to the ancestor who accidentally endowed me with these qualities.”
Edith Wharton in “A Backward Glance” (1934)
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“An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.”
E. F. Schumacher in “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered”
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“Let me present an alternate future with new classes of creative people instead of new classes of obsolete people and an exponentially expanding sphere of creativity that people are proud of and motivated to participate in.”
Jaron Lanier in “Exponential Creativity” episode of Existential Hope Podcast [edited]
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“Nothing is more certain, than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters; and, moreover, that it is much easier for an active mind to acquire the virtues of patience, than for a passive one to assume those of energy. […]
All intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort. Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others, is the parent even of speculative, and much more of practical, talent. […]
“The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking that ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than mystical metaphysics.”
John Stuart Mill “Considerations on Rrepresentative Government” (1861)
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“Practice is the best of all instructors.”
Publius Syrus in “Moral Sayings“
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“The new unfair advantage isn’t bigger ambition. It’s narrower domain expertise nobody else can be bothered with.”
Ash Maurya
A narrow initial focus does not preclude growing a large firm over time, but it enables:
- A better understanding of customer needs.
- A higher level of customer intimacy.
- A simpler product that’s easier and faster to develop.
- Better word of mouth.
- A profit sanctuary that larger competitors will ignore.
- Establishing a beachhead in a niche market that has unique needs rewards honesty; it’s harder for larger firms to make promises they don’t keep and win on size instead of reputation.
I blogged about this in “Starting Small can Lead to Big Success.”
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“The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.”
Philip Stanhope, in “Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son“
Quote is from Letter LXXVIII August 20, 1749.
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“While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” (2007)
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“For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.”
George E. P. Box Science and Statistics (1976)
Entrepreneurs face a similar challenge: they need to make the effort to generalize from specific observations, stories, data points and other miscellaneous bits of evidence. But they cannot let their tentative hypotheses lead them to reject disconfirming evidence.
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“Instead of scientific research being set up merely at the instigation of theory, it is coming to be recognized that from practice comes the most urgent demand for its rapid development.
If necessity is the mother of invention, scientifically developed production is the mother of scientific research.”
Arthur Edwin Kennelly (17 Dec 1861 – 18 Jun 1939) In ‘Scientific Research in the Engineering Schools‘, Electrical World (1920), 75, 151.
h/t Today in Science
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“There is one difference between theory and practice. Practice won’t let you forget anything or leave anything out. In theory, problems are easily solved because you can leave something out. I have found that an amazing thing. Any problem could be solved–if only it were different. Why the little problems should be so hard and some big problems should be so easy I never could understand.”
Charles F. Kettering in Speech “Lap-Welding Students to Life” collected in “Prophet of Progress: Prophet of Progress: Selections from the Speeches of Charles F. Kettering” Edited by T. A. Boyd
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“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an Art. It is a practice.”
Peter Drucker
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“We’re surrounded by the passion projects of the optimists of the past.”
Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly)
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“AI increases the demand for coordination work but doesn’t reduce the costs of coordination work. Watch for coordination challenges to increase in the near future.”
Lorin Hochstein (@NoRootCause) May-22-2026 tweet
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“I had an interesting experience at the beginning of World War II. We were running tests on a new type of propeller which was later used on boats during the war. We were running these tests in a little 25-foot boat up and down the Gulf Stream outside the harbor at Miami Beach. We always ran the tests in pretty bad weather, because we couldn’t find out anything in good weather.
“Two friends of mine, down there for a vacation, said to me one day: “Why don’t you go out and run that little boat up and down? Why do you have to go out and run that little boat up and down all the time in such bad weather? We think you’re crazy to do that. Why don’t you get somebody to do it for you?”
One of these friends happened to be an excellent golfer, and the other a good violinist. I said, “I never thought about that, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You fellows get somebody to practice your golf game and your fiddle for you. If you find that works, let me know, and I will get somebody to run that boat for me.”
You have to be part of the work. You have to live in the environment of the problem and then the facts and fallacies become apparent.”
Charles F. Kettering in a speech “Lap-Welding Students to Life” collected in “Prophet of Progress: Prophet of Progress: Selections from the Speeches of Charles F. Kettering” Edited by T. A. Boyd
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The threat to early founders is living in the future for too long.
Vision matters. It helps with hiring, selling, raising, and getting people to believe before the proof exists.
But vision is the engine, not the operating model.
“We’re going to win the market” is like saying “I’m going to win this chess game.” It may be true, but it’s useless for the next move.
The best founders I know keep the future in the distance and operate from the next measurable, pragmatic step, e.g. solve this specific problem for this specific niche at this scale. then let reality decide the next move.
Tom Ogrodzki in May-3-2026 Tweet
Ogrodzki is CEO of REDD, a provider of commercial real estate data for Central Europe. I included this quote because it captures the tension between a theory of the business and the practical need for mapping out next steps.
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“The human intellect is said to be so constituted that general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observations, and therefore come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for what he learns,—who has no teacher and no book,—such a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly he treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called the natural method of education.
Contrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time arrives you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is putting the cart before the horse.”
Arthur Schopenhauer in “Studies in Pessimism” Chapter: “On Education“
I think is true for entrepreneurial education that focuses on theory and does not provide practical experience.
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Some closing thoughts on what’s needed for an entrepreneur to succeed.
I think you need one or two insights that are contrary to conventional wisdom to set your theory of business. They should enable above average performance in an arena of your choice, or more accurately for a set of target customers. The day to day is focused execution of processes you have debugged and continue to improve. I think you have cultivate luck, which has more to do with building on your expertise and experience, honesty, helping others, and recognizing opportunities and some hustle. The more you explore, experiment, and learn from your experiences the more good luck you gather. It reminds me of a quote by Branch Rickey I originally curated in August 2012, and used again in “Five quotes From Branch Rickey for Entrepreneurs” and “Cultivating Luck in Business Endeavors and Relationships.”
“Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.”
Branch Rickey (quoted in Branch Rickey’s Little Blue Book: Wit and Strategy from Baseball’s Last Wise Man by John Monteleone)