The Virtue of Valuing Experience Over Opinion

There is a difference between what someone thinks and what they’ve lived. In an age of endless opinions and instant commentary, we’re often too quick to assume all voices carry the same weight. But wisdom doesn’t come from guessing—it comes from enduring, trying, failing, reflecting, and trying again. Valuing experience over opinion means listening more to those who’ve actually been through something, who have wrestled with reality and learned through the fire. This is how we avoid empty noise and start hearing truth.

A True Story: The Nurse Who Taught a Nation

In 2020, a video of a nurse named Dawn Bilbrough went viral. Exhausted after a 48-hour shift treating COVID-19 patients, she broke down in tears in a supermarket because panic buyers had cleared the shelves. “I just wanted to get some food,” she said, her voice cracking. It was a moment that silenced thousands of armchair experts. Politicians, journalists, and the public suddenly stopped debating and started listening—to someone who was there. Her experience had weight that opinion couldn’t touch. From that day, shelves were refilled, signs went up saying, “Please leave food for NHS staff,” and the conversation changed.

Three Quotes from Books About Learning Through Experience

In Meditations (circa 170 AD), Marcus Aurelius reflected:

Never value anything as profitable to yourself which shall compel you to break your word, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls or curtains.

~ Marcus Aurelius

In Educated (2018), Tara Westover wrote:

You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.

~ Tara Westover

In The War of Art (2002), Steven Pressfield shared:

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate; it will seduce you. It will lie to you. But it cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be bargained with. It knows no logic. It understands nothing but defeat.

~ Steven Pressfield

Five More Quotes About the Value of Experience

In 1961, John F. Kennedy said:

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth… that the torch has been passed to a new generation—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

~ John F. Kennedy

In 2006, Cheryl Strayed wrote in Tiny Beautiful Things:

Don’t listen to the people who haven’t been where you’re going. Listen to those who’ve been lost in that forest and clawed their way back.

~ Cheryl Strayed

In 2013, Brene Brown wrote in Daring Greatly:

Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage. And those who’ve risked and fallen know more than any critic on the sidelines ever will.

~ Brené Brown

In 1940, C.S. Lewis wrote:

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

~ C.S. Lewis

In 2021, Admiral William McRaven said:

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their opinions.

~ William H. McRaven

Life Lesson:

It’s easy to talk. It’s harder to live. Before taking someone’s word, ask yourself—have they lived what they speak? Trust the voices that have walked through the fire, not those yelling from a distance. Experience makes ideas real. And when you seek wisdom, turn to the ones who’ve been there, bled there, grown there. They won’t always speak loud—but their words will ring true.