Quotes and Sayings about Theories
"The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves."
- M. H. Abrams
(Related: Theories)
"Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians."
- Mortimer Adler
(Related: Love, Scientists, Theories)
"Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: Thought, Beginning, End, Theories, Tradition)
"I believe without exception that theory follows practice. Whenever there is a conflict between theory and practice, theory is wrong. As far as I'm concerned, we make theories for what people have done."
- David Baker
(Related: People, Conflict, Practice, Theories, Theory, Wrong)
"Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible."
- Hosea Ballou
(Related: Experience, Theories)
"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories."
- Stefan Banach
(Related: Theories)
"I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up."
- George Benson
(Related: Future, Guitar, Musicians, Theories)
"The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: History, Men, Anthropology, Doctrine, Property, Theories)
"One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness."
- David Bohm
(Related: Reality, Theories, Theory)
"And the continuity of our science has not been affected by all these turbulent happenings, as the older theories have always been included as limiting cases in the new ones."
- Max Born
(Related: Science, Theories)
"In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to start directly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Idea, Drama, Facts, Famous, Theories, Tragedy, Will)
"Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action."
- Constantin Brancusi
(Related: Action, Theories, Value)
"Some of you may have been hoping that today I would speak about Lucien Bouchard's latest economic theories. But I have decided to spare him for the time being: after all, he is a man."
- Kim Campbell
(Related: Time, Man, May, Theories, Today)
"On the one hand we publicly pronounce the equality of all peoples; on the other hand, in our immigration laws, we embrace in practice these very theories we abhor and verbally condemn."
- Emanuel Celler
(Related: Equality, Laws, Practice, Theories)
"Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Principles, Result, Theories)
"I know my theories and findings are hard for you to accept because they are so original and extraordinary."
- Alex Chiu
(Related: Theories)
"A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: People, Ideas, Obsessions, Theories)
"The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations."
- David Deutsch
(Related: Complexity, Explanations, Theories)
"The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests."
- David Deutsch
(Related: Explanations, Majority, Tests, Theories)
"Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense."
- David Deutsch
(Related: Common sense, Theories)
"The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief."
- George Eliot
(Related: Belief, Sincerity, Theories)
"It is always incorrect to assume you can know what someone's moral convictions are based on their philosophical theories."
- Stanley Fish
(Related: Theories)
"As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use."
- Gustave Flaubert
(Related: Facts, Theories)
"One of my theories is that men love with their eyes; women love with their ears."
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
(Related: Love, Men, Women, Eyes, Theories)
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
- John W. Gardner
(Related: Society, Excellence, Philosophy, Theories, Water, Will)
"While there I began to study the Asian religions as theories of mind."
- Daniel Goleman
(Related: Mind, Study, Theories)
"There is a class, moreover, by whom all these scientific theories, and more are held as ascertained facts, and as the basis of philosophical inferences which strike at the root of theistic beliefs."
- Asa Gray
(Related: Beliefs, Class, Facts, Theories)
"Most of the research which is done is determined by the requirement that it shall, in a fairly obvious and predictable way, reinforce the approved or fashionable theories."
- Celia Green
(Related: Obvious, Research, Theories)
"The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms."
- John B. S. Haldane
(Related: Religion, Science, Art, Fact, Man, Theories)
"Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed."
- Edith Hamilton
(Related: Nature, Facts, Human nature, Theories)
"Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect."
- Marvin Harris
(Related: Being, Open, Theories, Theory, World)
"The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences."
- Friedrich August von Hayek
(Related: Conformity, Consequences, Credit, Gain, Grave, May, Present, Theories)
"How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments."
- David Hilbert
(Related: Science, Time, Invention, Theories, Tools, Understanding)
"From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment."
- Johan Huizinga
(Related: Judgment, Opinion, Proof, Public, Public opinion, Purity, Theories)
"It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on."
- Jack Kerouac
(Related: Fault, Theories)
"I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief."
- Stephen Cole Kleene
(Related: Belief, Philosophy, Theories, Theory)
"The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life."
- Arthur Koestler
(Related: Life, Science, Progress, Theories)
"One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity."
- Rem Koolhaas
(Related: Simplicity, Theories)
"It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong."
- Saul Kripke
(Related: Theories, Theory, Wrong)
"Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one."
- Imre Lakatos
(Related: Idea, Character, Growth, Facts, Theories)
"No religious position is loyally served by refusing to consider annoying theories which may well turn out to be facts."
- Norman Lamm
(Related: Facts, May, Religious, Theories)
"Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society."
- Christian Lous Lange
(Related: Society, Development, Theories)
"There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works."
- Charley Lau
(Related: Theories)
"In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can throw one out if necessary."
- Bela Lugosi
(Related: Open, Theories)
"I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.'"
- Ian Mckellen
(Related: Act, Acting, Drama, Saying, School, Theories, Training)
"We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Facts, Newspapers, Talk, Theories)
"I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way."
- Robert Nozick
(Related: Science, Philosophy, Scientists, Theories)
"Evolutionary cosmology formulates theories in which a universe is capable of giving rise to and generating future universes out of itself, within black holes or whatever."
- Robert Nozick
(Related: Future, Giving, Theories, Universe)
"Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write music, he still was guided very much by his internal hearing, by what we call your internal ear."
- Leo Ornstein
(Related: Music, Hearing, Man, Theories)
"With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Experience, Time, Brevity, Effort, Sense, Theories)
"Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Ideas, Criticism, Help, May, Theories)
"Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Evolution, Existence, Theories)
"A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Art, Work, Theories)
"Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again."
- Karl Popper
(Related: Tests, Theories)
"We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men."
- George Ripley
(Related: Love, Men, Cause, Devotion, Literature, Taste, Theories)
"The only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone."
- Joe Rogan
(Related: Time, Acting, Theories)
"It is quite interesting that whilst there are tremendous theories, in the 1960s when IT was born, everybody was supposedly going to their cottage in the countryside to work in a virtual way."
- Richard Rogers
(Related: Work, Theories)
"Theories pass. The frog remains."
- Jean Rostand
(Related: Theories)
"The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas."
- Georges Rouault
(Related: Artist, Theories)
"Very dangerous things, theories."
- Dorothy L. Sayers
(Related: Theories)
"Theories crumble, but good observations never fade."
- Harlow Shapley
(Related: Theories)
"On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men."
- Ignazio Silone
(Related: Men, Civilization, Values, Culture, Living, School, Theories)
"And now, without having wearied my friends, I hope, with detailed scientific accounts, theories, or deductions, I will only say that I have endeavoured to tell just the story of the adventure itself."
- Joshua Slocum
(Related: Hope, Adventure, Friends, Now, Theories, Will)
"In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories."
- Agnes Smedley
(Related: Leading, Newspapers, Radical, Theories)
"Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe."
- Tony Snow
(Related: Science, Day, Error, Help, Scientists, Theories, Universe, Wonders, World)
"Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Facts, Theories, Visions)
"Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive."
- Leland Stanford
(Related: Science, Control, Wealth, Creation, Duty, Economy, First, Nation, Theories, Writers)
"In other words, unlike some people with new theories, we will go out, we'll go into a school and we get products and the products are evaluated, whether it's by teachers or others. The scores are quantified and then we compare performances."
- Robert Sternberg
(Related: People, School, Teachers, Theories, Will, Words)
"In my opinion, assassination theories will continue to revolve around these assassinations as they have around several other significant assassinations in American history. The assassination of President Lincoln comes to mind."
- Louis Stokes
(Related: History, American, Assassination, Mind, Opinion, President, Theories, Will)
"Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment."
- Allen Tate
(Related: Theories)
"Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation."
- Allen Tate
(Related: Theories)
"There's no such thing as 'facts of life'. Only standing theories that haven't been disproved as of yet."
- Simon Travaglia
(Related: Life, Theories)
"In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them."
- Maurice de Vlaminck
(Related: Art, Theories)
"I am more fond of achieving than striving. My theories must prove to be facts or be discarded as worthless. My efforts must soon be crowned with success, or discontinued."
- Carolyn Wells
(Related: Success, Facts, Theories)
"It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena."
- William Whewell
(Related: Theories)
"The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. In false theories, the contrary is the case."
- William Whewell
(Related: Class, Facts, Theories)
"Strong and convincing art has never arisen from theories."
- Mary Wigman
(Related: Art, Theories)
"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories."
- John Wilmot
(Related: Children, Now, Theories)
"Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories."
- John Wilmot
(Related: Children, Now, Theories)
"Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Love, Work, Body, Theories, World, Writer)
"I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes."
- Edward Witten
(Related: Thought, states, Theories, Theory, Wrong)
"I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success."
- Wilbur Wright
(Related: Pet, Success, Flying, Future, Help, Machine, Sense, Theories, Will)