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Originally Posted by TeUnit
When you limp you are usually playing out of position without initiative, so you either need the best hand or to bluff the villans. If you raise you can win the hand right there, your perceived range will be stronger and it will be easier to continuation bet and get the villans to fold, and you should get less players in the hand.
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Well said. To the original poster of this thread, I think another reason for this is because raising gives you "another chance to win." If you limp in, then you can only win by having the best hand at showdown (or getting opponent[s] to fold before then). By raising, you have these same "ways to win" but you also have the added chance that they will fold to this immediate raise.
I think you should be wary of any advice that uses an absolute like "always" or "never" because there seems to be exceptions for various situations. In the example of limping (rather than open-raising), Daniel Negraenu has had success with limping in (and "small-ball" raises other times) because his play-style needs to protect his limping range. His play-style involves playing lots of hands against weaker players (hands like 7-5 suited or 8-9 suited), so he needs to include some stronger hands in his limping range (like QQ) for balance and lack of predictability. Essentially, playing so many hands is vulnerable to being exploited by early raises and playing back on later streets - so he must include trapping with hands like QQ occasionally so opponents are never sure if he "has it" or not. What you don't want to do is try to imitate him playing weaker hands (and often!) and then raising premium hands like normal. It will then become obvious to your opponents that you raise with the best hands and limp with the trash hands: they will just play-back at you every time and give you the pot if you raise (indicating you have a strong hand since you didn't balance your limping range).
Without getting advanced into subtle points and strategies, I think open-raising as a default and avoid "open-limping" is a better play if you are just playing more straight-forward and solid. This doesn't mean other strategies involving limping are bad (maybe other strategy points can justify it), but just that it isn't the conventional and should be avoided by most players who are not pros.
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