It has been said, “Not everything that is learned is contained in books”. Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books.

We have learnt a lot of vital skills since our birthday from experiences such as walking, talking, eating and playing. When we attended to school, we gained some other important information about life, science, technology, language and society from books. Both the information gained from experiences and books formed our attitude and made us someone who we are now, so both of them are very important. We cannot find all the facts in books and the real assessment of wisdom is not correlated with the number of books which a person has read. So without experience we do not have objective information about the world. On the other hand, the knowledge gained from experience is very limited and it depends on the situations we encounter in our lives. Although we learn better from experience than books, sometimes we have to pay more for its lessons because we lost our worthwhile lives and opportunities. Therefore I think our first source for information should be books and then support it by experience.

First of all, we have finite life with limited time and abilities to examine different fields and situations while we can obtain a lot of various information about most aspects of the world in books. For example, since I am not astronomer, it is impossible for me to travel to the moon and understand how the remote distances look like but I can learn a lot of good information about its gravity, atmosphere, soil and temperature in aerospace books. Furthermore, some information cannot be obtained from experiences and we must accept scientists’ theories. For example, we can feel gravity and it is tangible for us, but our information about atoms arises from chemists’ hypothesis and suggestions. Since nobody can see real formations and reactions of atoms, scientists just try to depict them. So our determinate abilities and time avoid us to get infinite information about whatever we like from experience.

Moreover, although the knowledge gained from experience is constant and we never forget it, its cost is very expensive. There is a famous statement “Experience is the best teacher but its tuition is heavy”. If we want to experience everything to increase our knowledge about the world or experience what others have experienced in the past, we need to live 1000 years which is impossible. For example, psychologists have gathered a lot of examined information about marriage in books. They assist us to know ourselves and then choose proper person for marriage. If we use this practical knowledge, we can avoid mistakes. Experiencing all the information they passed to us thorough several generations takes 100 years and after that we would get disappointed and bored. The cost of some experiences are as expensive as our life or health. Therefore we have to be careful to consult with knowledgeable people and use books to avoid happening unpleasant events.

All in a word, experiences and books are two main sources of knowledge with significant differences. If we use both of them properly in the appropriate time and situation, we would be known as a wise person. Although experience teaches us better, its information is restricted to our time and abilities and sometimes it is dangerous or difficult. So it is more logic to gain the knowledge from experience for supporting the knowledge from books.