Are books more important than experience?

I think that you can learn a lot of things from books. I love to read and I love to get new knowledge from books, but I don't think that books can replace experience. When we read about something that we have never tried we might gain some knowledge about the topic, but we don't understand it the way that we understand it when we have personal experience with that topic. An example from my own life could be the books about nursing that I read when I was a nursing student. I wouldn't say that I didn't learn anything from the books. I learned a lot from the books and the books were very useful, but I understood everything much better when I was able to combine the knowledge from the books with practical experience from the hospital. We needed the theoretical knowledge from the books in order to take care of the patients, but without the practical knowledge that we got from personal experience we would never have been able become good at nursing.

Reading a book to gain knowledge IS an experience. It's a different means of getting information, but it's just as important since books are the compilation of the experience of others who have come before us. Sometimes books are the only means to information and sometimes they help prepare you for an experience.

Ir is my belief that books is the first of knowledge where one must start in learning process. The experience is to sharpen the knowledge gain from readings and the real application of our knowledge. In education process, the lower level we are, the broader scope of our learning. We will be exposed to wider scope of knowledge at basic learning process. Then, the higher our education or learning process, the more specific area being covered. And the last one, job specification, this is the exactly specific area of education or learning where only some of your knowledge you learn when you in classroom being used and applied. It's undeniable that all employers will prefer experience candidate in job interview. But this doesn't mean new fresh graduate will have zero chance in getting the job. If new fresh graduate can proof in interview that he or she really understand what the job needs from he or she, the employer might probably will choose him or her. I've been working as personnel and human resource manager in one firm for about 2 years. This is the criteria we looking for in our new employee. If you have experience but you not good in it, then you are not favorable, but if you can proof your knowledge about the job nature and it's requirements, you deserve the job. Another way to motivate yourself, you should think it this way, if all employer looking for experience employee, then where all the fresh graduate will go? There's an equal chance for both the experience and fresh graduate in job interview. But, for senior level or high technical aspect kind of job, there's no chance for fresh graduate. The position example are Manager or assistant manager, or head foreman in workshop.

I think that we can certainly learn a lot from both. I don't think that one is more important than the other. We can gain a lot from our experiences, and from reading books, and such.

Books and observing people can make we learn a lot and even not make the same mistakes. We can learn more being silent than being on the spot light and speaking more than listening in life, it's hard but if we were careful maybe we wouldn't make half the mistakes we do, for example to think before saying and hurting someone we care about.

They are both important. As long as you know how to read and comprehend, books will always be there to add your knowledge. Experience is always the best teacher. You are right! Many job offerings are looking for the experience rather than what we learn from the books. But for some situation, we can only read facts about the history and sciences thru books only and never be gained thru any experience (internet is out of the question here so it is not counted). Books and experiences are both important, so there is no better over the lesser one.

Book is the first step for us to know about something we can imagine about the knowledge in a brief information which informed by books but experience.make it more clearly..experience is the practice while books are the theory i guess they bot are important

I think that getting the knowledge and information is the most imortant thing,If we get th experieineces from books or televeision or the internet is jus a bonus at the knowledge.

Hi! As you said experiences are essential than books. Mere reading the books won't help us in getting knowledge. But books like life history of leaders, autobiographies, great novels will do magic in our life. I wondered many times after reading some life histories, how they lived and managed critical things in their life! Rather than facing the problem by ourselves straight-away, its a good to learn from others mistakes and experiences. We can learn those things from life history of personalities i.e. it is a kind of experience that we are getting without facing any problems.

I guess both are important in one's life. Because there are things which you can only learn from experience which you cannot read on books. On the other hand, there are also things which you can only learn from books which you cannot encounter on your experience. :)

There should be no more important than the other. both serve good source of learning. Books theorize the learning and experience validates it. but for some people who had no opportunity to learn through the books, experience still is the best for them. A bookish person who had not experience the theory will have difficulty comprehending it fully because of lack of experience. for example: Black is black. that's what the book say... but for a person who don't exactly see what black is wouldn't know what black is really. For a person who have experienced black, wouldn't know also that it is black because of lack of theory. For me, which of the two has a greater importance...I maybe wrong but I should say.. both are important to learn.

Your experience is limited to you and the people you know. Of course, you can learn a lot of things by having an interesting life. But there are so many things you can't learn like this. You can't know about what happened in the past, nor have a global understanding about the world. You can't know what people thought at some point and what are the ideas that change the world. And why.

Both is needed as others also mentioned. I believe books are the one which makes a person understand and experience is the one thing which makes a person know about things in a better way. It can be said that without learning, experience is half-complete. For example, lets take the case of having Laboratories in Colleges or Schools. We read and solve things theory-tically, but to know how things work in actuality, we have to do labs in order to know it more clearly and understand it and it helps to understand in your theories. So, you can say both things are inter-connected.

Books are the building blocks of hands on experience. Imagine if instead of learning the information from books, you had to preform all the experiments yourself to get the knowledge. Instead, you can quickly lean on other people's work to gain what they learned and build on by doing things yourself.

I think... Even with experience, there are somethings that we still don't know and that we go to the books for added new knowledge. But if you just study with books, especially about thing that require on hand experience, it would be difficult unless if you're a really smart person. So I think both are hand in hand. Or maybe apples and oranges.