Reminds me of a comedy skit about philosophers "playing" football, or soccer if you are an American. They all stand around thinking about the game, thinking about the meaning of the game, thinking about the existence of the game, until one philosopher (Socrates, I think) exclaims, "I got it!" and kicks the ball into the goal.
Purpose of thought is action; I am assuming words mean thoughts? Action without thought is directionless, though words/thoughts without action is pointless. I think both need to be present; the cultivated man aligns his actions to carefully gathered thoughts. In the absence of the ideal, action matters more, but I contend that abnormal should not be setup as model for imitation.
Yup, from the Monty Python ensemble!
Agreed with your thoughts. I was quite literally referring to the possibility of two kinds of people, one who learns, rather naively, from books, stories, and words, one for example who grows up in a more affluent house, and doesn't learn the world through other people's actions, but through other people's words, for instance his private teachers, that all give him an idealized view of the world. Whereas the man-boy of action, who grows up having to farm the field, having to deal with real people every day, who has to navigate through their pretense, who learns early on that people say one thing and do another, will learn about the world through action, and thus be less idealistic, and less likely to be moral, since he'll try to fit into what the world is. It's just rather interesting, that this saying, "do as I say and not as I do", seems to reveal so much more about humans than what people have thought. For one, like I mentioned in the post, it seems to codify the idea that our words are always nobler than our actions. This presents to us a being whose "spirit is willing" but whose "flesh is weak". And there's so much more to be unpacked in that one saying.