Words matter. These are the best Theory Quotes from famous people such as G. Stanley Hall, Mo Ibrahim, Jerry Seinfeld, Robert Mapplethorpe, Geoffrey West, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Every theory of love, from Plato down, teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself.
The state and its elites must be subject, in theory and in practice, to the same laws that its poorest citizens are.
My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.
My theory about creativity is that the more money one has, the more creative one can be.
My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a – put into a predictive framework. That’s the quest.
We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
I always had the theory that if you have a dream, chase it. And I’m chasing it.
Writing laws based on an abstract theory, rather than reality, is a dangerous undertaking.
It’s perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.
The Popish theory, which assumes that Christ, the Apostles and believers, constituted the Church while our Saviour was on earth, and this organization was designed to be perpetual.
In the late 19th century, the theory that the Aborigines were an inferior race that was doomed to die out became accepted as fact.
The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto separated branches of the science.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards – Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.
Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.
No matter how beautiful the theory, one irritating fact can dismiss the entire formulism, so it has to be proven.
About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.
The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you’ll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you’ll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.
Is the universe ‘elegant,’ as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant – if I only knew what they were.
The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.
String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.
I was brought up to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil.
There’s a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they’d eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn’t true.
In New Classical theory, periods of declining employment – business cycle downturns – may be caused by an unexpected decline in aggregate demand, which leaves workers mistakenly holding out for nominal wages that exceed the new market-clearing level.
My present work concerns the problems connected with the theory of elementary particles, the theory of gravitation and cosmology and I shall be glad if I can manage to make some contribution to these important branches of science.
If you’re a physicist, for heaven’s sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn’t agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.
I have this friend who has a theory that lots of towns have energies. And, for instance, certain places in Alabama have bad ones because they were built on reservations or built on cemeteries or something. But Nashville has a really gravitational, magnetic pull.
I have a theory. An audience doesn’t need to get wrapped up in blackness every time they see a Negro actor. And a movie doesn’t have to be about race just because there’s a Negro in it.
It is probably safe to say that all the changes of factual knowledge which have led to the relativity theory, resulting in a very great theoretical development, are completely trivial from any point of view except their relevance to the structure of a theoretical system.
My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles.
He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
Here is the real domino theory – gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.
In 2002, a Scottish journalist, during a dinner meant to be private, absolutely wanted me to react to Stephen Hawking’s comments. I said one shouldn’t pay too much attention to what Hawking was saying because he was a celebrity but not a specialist of elementary particle theory.
As soon as we step beyond the established boundaries of pure thermodynamic theory, we enter a trackless region confronting us with obstacles which even the most astute of us are almost at a loss to tackle.
The oldest theory of contract is I think negative.
In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God’s creation… as music.
At MIT, I had the good fortune for seven years to teach network theory, which is basic to many disciplines, to one-third of the undergraduate student body. It was an experiment to see how high we could bring their level of understanding, and it exceeded all of my expectations.
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.
The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory.
My theory is the root of a country artist is truth and honesty. For me, I look at Sam Hunt. The truth and the honest thing is we have southern roots, we were raised in a southern way, but we listen to Drake and other stuff, too.
Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.
Essential to the theory of evolution is the premise that everything has come into being by itself.
But one did not do feminist theory, as such, in those days, not only because male academic discourse did not recognize such a term, but especially because the women’s movement did not either.
Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
I coined this term ‘freedom thru limitation’ back in the ’90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring ‘anything can be art’ theory.
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
A friend of mine had this great theory about the Teletubbies, that it’s preparing us for being mindless. And getting us ready for living in an underground world. That’s why the scenery is so flat.
The theory in great families was ‘why work if you don’t have to.’ Being a public figure was reserved for movie stars.
Beck said he didn’t believe in the theory of a song coming through you as if you were an open vessel. I agree with him to a certain extent.
There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.
My theory is this; I’m not a political songwriter. I’m an honest songwriter.
I’m a big fan of simplicity, especially with songs and I try not to make them complicated. I just make them simple and let people absorb that message themselves. That’s my theory.
The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy, and one of my specializations was the logic and mathematics of game theory. I’ve also got a degree in drama, so I know about stories, characterizations, plot arcs, and the like. Lots of game designers can do one or the other: I’ve got the skills for both.
I have a theory that there are still parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age of between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up.
The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena.
Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.
If string theory is a mistake, it’s not a trivial mistake. It’s a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy.
Jerry Seinfeld has an interesting theory. He goes, ’20 pounds up or down, and you lose your funny.’
I don’t know anything about music theory at all. Zero. But I don’t really need to.
For ten years, I went to piano lessons. I don’t think I’m a very musical person, and the theory quite defeated me, but I had a freak aptitude for Debussy and Ravel.
I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I’m a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work.
I think simplicity is a good guide: The more economical a theory, the better.
Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.
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.
Nearly everyone I know seems to have a well-developed theory as to why this country is past redemption, or almost, and every theory seems almost right.
If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I’ve ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.
The theory of cultural bias… is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can’t be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.
On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism.
In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance, I myself don’t like it.
My siblings and I had this theory that my parents were spies.
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence, I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.
While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
Our physiological constitution is obviously a product of Darwinian processes, insofar as you buy the evolutional theory as a generative, as an account of the mechanism that generated us. Our physiology evolved, our behaviors evolved, and our accounts of those behaviors, both successful and unsuccessful, evolved.
Life is so unlike theory.
Scientists have no agreed theory of the origin of life – plenty of scenarios, conjectures and just-so stories, but nothing with solid experimental support.
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
The application of group theory to physics became one of the main branches of physics that I specialized in.
I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.
Vietnam was a lie but at least there was a political agenda. It was the domino theory. Iraq is about nothing but George Bush’s ego laced with imperialist ambitions. And it was helped by your government.
Any talk of ‘craft’ makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don’t know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it’s like the first time. There’s no craft in that.
The theory of isolation of certain tasks in certain hemispheres of the brain suggests I shouldn’t even be able to speak, never mind write.
Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such.
My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being – well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.
We completely reject the theory of evolution.
After developing a primitive theory (1968) I therefore did not pursue this subject. However, the work was taken up by others and in 1974 the first experiments were done in the ISR.
String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string’s vibration determines the nature of its effect.
Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations.
I have never believed that central banks should have rigid inflation targeting. That is not a good thing to stabilize. There is nothing in economic theory to back this.
This is the problem for which revolutionary theory has yet to find the right solution, if there is one. The difficulty is that the economic interests of the two classes are antagonistic.
Hemingway’s short story ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ is a classic of its kind. It illustrates Hemingway’s ‘iceberg theory,’ which requires that a story find its effectiveness by hiding more than it reveals.
That is why one day I said my game will be like the Pythagorean Theorem – hard to figure out. A lot of people really don’t know the Pythagorean Theory. They don’t make them like me anymore. They don’t want to make them like that anymore.
I have a theory that most people in Hollywood are from Texas.
If, as is the custom, I speak mainly about my own researches, I must say that I was fortunate in finding that not everything had yet been gleaned in the field of general thermodynamic radiation theory.
Architecture doesn’t come from theory. You don’t think your way through a building.
I really don’t like art where you need to know so much theory to understand. If the theory is removed, it doesn’t do anything. That means that this work is an illustration of theory, and I don’t believe in the power of the work itself.
I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.
In theory, the Internet should bring us all closer together and slowly eliminate our differences.
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.
There certainly is a tension between the relativity of simultaneity and non-locality in quantum theory, but it’s not strong enough to add up to a falsification of either side by itself.
I always found it satisfying that gravity was described by Einstein’s geometric theory of general relativity.
I’m very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we’re all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.
The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.
The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three spatial dimensions plus time are sufficiently small that they haven’t been observed yet.
In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don’t know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.
Land: A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Tattoos are so widespread, so ugly and so very, very permanent. You can, in theory, have them removed – but a large chunk of your living flesh will go with it.
Science ignores the spiritual realm because it is not amenable to scientific analysis. As importantly, the predictive success of Newtonian theory, emphasizing the primacy of a physical Universe, made the existence of spirit and God an extraneous hypothesis that offered no explanatory principles needed by science.
My parents encouraged us to commit to things, so if we wanted to learn an instrument, it was all the grades and all the theory.
We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.
Even when they are saturated in the sense of the older theory of valence, the elementary atoms still possess sufficient chemical affinity to bind other seemingly also saturated atoms and groups of atoms, under generation of clearly defined atomic bonds.
I’m not a big theory person. So when I get asked questions that demand serious statements, I just make it up.
A lot of my role is advocacy, and as a scientist, you’re an advocate, too, because you are coming up with a theory and having to convince your fellow scientists that you’re right.
Discomfort levels in our societies are rising, or so it would seem. In theory, we invoke diversity and tolerance. But in real life, we raise our hackles and withdraw into ourselves.
To hate is to study, to study is to understand, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I’ll end up loving your theory.
My theory is that big underwear makes big girls look bigger.
The fact – not theory – that evolution has occurred and the Darwinian theory as to how it occurred have become so confused in popular opinion that the distinction must be stressed.
If we are to develop profound theory to solve the intractable problems in our societally-critical domains… we must learn to crawl into the life of what makes people tick.
The first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.
Typically in science, individual scientists make up their minds about scientific fact or theory one at a time. We don’t take votes. We just don’t vote on quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, why the sky is blue, or anything else.
Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter.
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the ‘Mind of God’ is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.
In 1989, I was awarded the Von Neumann Prize in Operations Research Theory by the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences. They cited my works in the areas of portfolio theory, sparse matrix techniques and the SIMSCRIPT programming language.
I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I’m just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.
String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.
There are values of humanity, culture, beauty, community that may require deviations from the cold logic of market theory.
They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.
Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.
Very much, string theory is simply a work in progress. What we are inching toward every day are predictions that within the realm of current technology we hope to test. It’s not like we’re working on a theory that is permanently beyond experiment. That would be philosophy.
My theory on smear pieces is try and win ’em over.
Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric ‘selectron,’ quarks ought to have ‘squark’ partners, and so on.
Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.
The evolutionary theory of senescence can be stated as follows: while bodies are not designed to fail, neither are they designed for extended operation.
I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
String theory is not the only theory that can accommodate extra dimensions, but it certainly is the one that really demands and requires it.
The road to energy efficiency is, in theory, a sustainability sweepstake. More efficiency means that less fuel is required to generate a given amount of energy, which in turn means lower costs for the provider and cheaper prices for the customers.
I think there’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. Everyone is like, ‘I want to unlock the single secret to ‘Lost.’ There isn’t any one secret. There is not a unified field theory for ‘Lost,’ nor do we think there should be, because philosophically, we don’t buy into that as a conceit.
A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified.
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
The Marxist theory of ideology is extremely contentious, not least because it is tied to socio-economic hypotheses that are no longer believable.
I wrote an ITV drama in the 1960s, a satire on management theory that starred Leonard Rossiter. I’m also a poet and have had work in the ‘Spectator.’
Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn’t influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.
A captain of the Navy ought to be a man of strong and well connected sense, with a tolerable good education, a gentleman, as well as a seaman both in theory and practice.
In 1956, when I began doing theoretical physics, the study of elementary particles was like a patchwork quilt. Electrodynamics, weak interactions, and strong interactions were clearly separate disciplines, separately taught and separately studied. There was no coherent theory that described them all.
I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.
A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business.
My theory is this: Women falter when they’re called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they’re called on to enact them.
I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity.
Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa’s head which turned these terrors to stone.
I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory.
I have a theory of living on the boundary: on the boundary of patriarchy and the boundary of different dimensions.
My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy.
I have a theory that if you’re famous more years than you’re not famous, then you get a little nutty.
I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don’t believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.
I’ve never really been schooled in music theory. I’m a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it’s more unique that some other people.
Economic theory dictates that the value of a company is basically the present value of its future profits. To estimate Facebook’s value through its future profits, we need to have a view on its user growth and how this will evolve in the next 10 to 50 years.
I don’t really believe in the auteur theory.
Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.
Songwriting is different from music, although I don’t deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.
Their films would probably be better if they’d seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much.
Game theory is a branch of, originally, applied mathematics, used mostly in economics and political science, a little bit in biology, that gives us a mathematical taxonomy of social life, and it predicts what people are likely to do and believe others will do in cases where everyone’s actions affect everyone else.
The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It’s not about being a rock star. It’s about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting.
The whole intention of empirical economics is to force theory down to Earth.
Growth theory did not begin with my articles of 1956 and 1957, and it certainly did not end there. Maybe it began with ‘The Wealth of Nations’; and probably even Adam Smith had predecessors.
From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.
In my travels, I also noticed that kids in Thailand like spicy food, and kids in India love curry. I’m hoping to introduce my son, Hudson, to lots of veggies and spices when he’s young. I say that before he’s started on solid foods, so it could be easier in theory than practice!
My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.
Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique.
There is no body of theory or significant body of relevant information, beyond the comprehension of the layman, which makes policy immune from criticism.
Some wonder whether some day we will arrive at a theory of everything and run out of new problems to solve – much as the effort to explore the earth ran out of new continents to explore.
I had more or less abandoned the idea of an electroweak gauge theory during the period 1961-1970. Of the several reasons for this, one was the failure of my naive foray into renormalizability.
Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‘Don’t try.’ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.
I definitely don’t subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.
The problem with feature filmmaking is that it offers you this mirage of being able to achieve perfection, as the theory of it is that you have control of every part of the film, though in reality, it is as inexact as the next thing in your life.
When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.
All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many.
I like to call it the scalar boson because this reflects an essential component of the theory – it means that the field the boson travels through has no preferred direction, unlike the way a magnetic field does.
My theory is children don’t do what you tell them to do, they do what you do. You have to always do the right thing because they follow you.
It’s my theory that many writers were the confidantes of one or the other parent. I was my mother’s confidante; she had been her mother’s confidante.
In theory, I stick to how I could eat if I lived a thousand years ago. I take processed foods off the menu, and stick to things I could hunt or gather, with more fruits, vegetables, and nuts – and less meat.
If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.
I believe in the theory that one cannot make a good film; it just happens.
There’s always been that theory that if a candidate can’t run a decent campaign, he probably can’t run a decent presidency. That might be true, although sadly I must admit that running a brilliant campaign does not translate into running a brilliant White House.
If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principle out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany.
Your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable, at least for the present.
I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you’re not relying on things you’ve done before.
THE rich possess ample means to realize any theory they may chuse to adopt in the education of their children, regardless of the cost; but it is not so with him whose Subsistence is derived from industry.
The standard theory may survive as a part of the ultimate theory, or it may turn out to be fundamentally wrong. In either case, it will have been an important way-station, and the next theory will have to be better.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
I have nothing against 3-D in theory. But I’ve also never run to the movies because something’s in 3-D.
I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.
Incredibly, whenever I have proposed the theory that half of government workers could be cut, current and former federal employees I know have all agreed.
Now I’m no biologist, but it seems to make a lot of sense that slow lives, as well as being enjoyable, are long lives. One only has to think of the example of the tortoise for proof of this theory from the animal world.
To me, the writer’s main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared – she’s right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That’s the theory, anyway.
You don’t attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It’s the same thing with psychotherapy.
Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed.
What do women do when they get together? We sit around and talk! Men, not so much. My theory is that this difference is genetic and dates back to the hunter-gatherer societies, when the men had to be quiet as they hunted, lest they scare away the bison and then everyone starved to death and it was all their fault.
My theory is that balance is key – nothing in excess.
Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.
My mother was an economics professor. I’m proficient in math, and statistics, game theory, symbolic logic and all of that.
When I was in film school, I was learning more theory than practice.
As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.
Filibusters should require 35 senators to… make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. The number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.
It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
But we did conclude that Ray had actually killed Dr. King pursuant to his theory that he was going to be able to get hold of that money. He had learned of this offer through his ties in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
Portfolio theory, as used by most financial planners, recommends that you diversify with a balance of stocks and bonds and cash that’s suitable to your risk tolerance.
I have a theory and I really believe it. I think your worst weakness can become your greatest single strength.
The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines.
We humans have a tendency to see ourselves as completely different from other animals, and the way in which large segments of the public continue to reject the theory of evolution is just one symptom of that malaise.
My theory is if you have a religion, it’s a good one. Because some people don’t have any at all.
I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.
There is a theory in showbiz circles that mentally you remain the same age as when you first tasted fame, and I think there is a grain of truth in this.
A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory.
You can convince yourself of just about anything when you want to believe a conspiracy theory.
Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it.
See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn’t learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot.
What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They’re attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That’s certainly physics, but it’s a kind of physics that is not yet testable.
America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone’s going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism – or, at least, we used to.
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.
One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory.
My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it.
I hesitate to predict whether this theory is true. But if the general opinion of Mankind is optimistic then we’re in for a period of extreme popularity for science fiction.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
I used to have a theory actually that, if you’ve had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you’re going to make a lousy comedian.
There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.
What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.
My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.
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.
Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.
I never had the time or luxury to think about inventing my own colour theory. When colour came, I was interested in expressing things that happened around me in time.
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
When I arrived at Harvard, I wanted to design a course in political theory that would have interested me, back when I was started out, in a way that the standard things didn’t.
Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.
By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You’ve just got to keep moving. You can’t stop.
Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea.
Every string theory that’s been written down says the speed of light is universal. But other ideas about quantum gravity predict the speed of light has actually increased.
Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
The classics of Marxism, while fully appreciating the significance of the Darwinian theory, pointed out the errors of which Darwin was guilty. Darwin’s theory, though unquestionably materialist in its main features, is not free from some serious errors.
I don’t write anything that I haven’t lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.
It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead.
The Galapagos Islands are probably the most famous wildlife-watching destination in the world. And no wonder – it’s almost impossible to exaggerate the sheer spectacle of the place that provided inspiration for Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking theory of natural selection.
There’s a thing called the ‘One Drop’ theory in African-American culture, which is if you have one drop of black blood in you, you’re black.
It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
First of all, the Big Bang wasn’t very big. Second of all, there was no bang. Third, Big Bang Theory doesn’t tell you what banged, when it banged, how it banged. It just said it did bang. So the Big Bang theory in some sense is a total misnomer.
We’re going to need a definitive quantum theory of gravity, which is part of a grand unified theory – it’s the main missing piece.
I think I’ve always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole ‘shut up and smile’ theory. I haven’t ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.
Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.
You can’t imagine how much detail we know about brains. There were 28,000 people who went to the neuroscience conference this year, and every one of them is doing research in brains. A lot of data. But there’s no theory. There’s a little, wimpy box on top there.
Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles.
It’s my theory that one of the big reasons clinics have shut down – and will continue to shut down – is that former abortion workers have spoken out about their experiences in public and worked to testify against their former employers.
I’ve always been interested in the idea of space exploration. When I was younger it was just a dream, but the theory of rockets being able to travel through space was very much alive. I found it very exciting.
I don’t think about a theory of everything when I do my research. And even if we knew the ultimate underlying theory, how are you going to explain the fact that we’re sitting here? Solving string theory won’t tell us how humanity was born.
The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels – the essence of the Greens’ theory of global warming – has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism.
Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.
Notwithstanding these major arguments the wave theory initially did not meet with complete acceptance.
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn’t find it, but we think we’re hot on the trail.
The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.
There are two books that I often travel with; one is ‘The Theory on Moral Sentiments’ by Adam Smith. The other is ‘The Meditations.’ It’s not that I agree with either views expressed in the books, but I believe ideas and thoughts of older generations can offer food for thought for the current generation.
Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the overall distribution of kinds of items in a given arrangement.
I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks’ ‘Reading for the Plot. ‘
A script is like a theory of a movie.
Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.
Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.
I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition.
I have a theory that there’s almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you’re beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn’t know I’d end up making my living from low-budget, independent films.
As an undergraduate at UBC in Canada, I fell in love with economic theory. It was the right choice for me.
The absurd consequences of neglecting structure but using the concept of order just the same are evident if one examines the present terminology of information theory.
I’m not the religious-conspiracy-theorist go-to guy, particularly. But I think it’s really kind of silly to try to equate birds falling out of the sky with some kind of an end-times theory.
The final outcome cannot be known, either to the originator of a new theory, or to his colleagues and critics, who are bent on falsifying it. Thus, the scientific innovator may feel all the more lonely and uncertain.
According to the now almost universally accepted theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin.
In theory, people would pick progression every time over being idle. But if you look at us as a culture, as a people, you would say that if you get up at five o’clock in the morning, eat your breakfast, go to work, make money, pay your bills, you’re progressing, when you’re still doing what’s comfortable.
Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory – that’s not really my world.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
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.
The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure.
According to ‘M’ theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, ‘M’ theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing.
In order to displace a prevailing theory or paradigm in science, it is not enough to merely point out what it cannot explain; you have to offer a new theory that explains more data, and do so in a testable way.
As a conservative, I maintain a healthy skepticism of the theory of man-made global warming. I also believe that more people enjoying the fruits of modernity and economic development is a good thing – as long as those people arrived legally and obey the law.
Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud’s psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around the country as a tool for interpreting literary texts but has rarely, if ever, been discussed in science departments.
One of the most interesting things about the cognitive theory is the idea that anger and interpersonal conflict ultimately result from a mental con. In other words, you’re telling yourself things that aren’t entirely true when you’re fighting with someone.
The market always, in theory at least, looks ahead. And it’s always trying to take in every bit of information that it can as quickly as it can. You don’t really care so much if the company made a dollar last year; you want to know what it’s going to make this year.
I don’t believe in the no-carb diet… I have a theory. I think if you give up carbs, you get cranky. You must include them in your daily diet.
I had faith in the concept and the theory that all Americans are endowed with the right to a fair trial and I would be fairly judged and fairly tried.
Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England – there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn’t abusive, it was a good life for people.
I have emphasized experiments more than theory. Of course, we need some theory when thinking of soft matter.
Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it’s also in the system, the society.
Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.
I studied physics at university, and I’m still a sucker for an experiment or scientific theory.
If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
The crisis triggered a fertile period of scientific ferment and revolution in economic theory.
You know very well that unless you’re a scientist, it’s much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.
The first issue to be settled is whether socialism has a right to exist Are its allegations concerning the present system true? Is industry proceeding on a principle of fraud? I wish to test the power of recent economic theory to give an exact answer to this question.
No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.
Science is to find something unknown, while invention is to make something new out of the known theory.
Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it’s an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.
The theory of evolution is totally inadequate to explain the origin and manifestation of the inorganic world.
Charles Darwin got his theory, his notion of natural selection, evolution, and so did its independent discoverer, Alfred Wallace, from reading Malthus.
There is no single theory that is used in economics that considers the finite nature of resources. It’s shocking.
Today’s practicality is often no more than the accepted form of yesterday’s theory.
I went to Vassar College for undergraduate and studied literature and queer theory, and all of the above. And then I took a Fulbright scholarship in Russia.
It’s just a theory really, but I have always thought that your physical surroundings can shape your voice and personality.
America’s popular heroes have seldom been its great thinkers, and even less its scientists. The success of TV’s ‘Big Bang Theory,’ which seems to give the lie to this claim, is more the exception that proves the rule.
When I was in high school, I was really into string theory and superstring theory and read ‘Scientific American.’ It’s fascinating.
I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.
It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It’s wrong.
Critical race theory is racist. It does nothing to bring us together.
I take the view that we all have permission to be a little baffled by quantum information science and algorithmic information theory.
This is a great country, but fortunately for you, it is not perfect. There is much to be done to bring about complete equality. Remove hunger. Bring reality closer to theory and democratic principles.
I’m very strongly in favor of the auteur theory.
As Development Secretary, I have seen in the developing world that climate change there is not a theory, is not a future threat: it is a contemporary crisis.
I’ve got this theory that human beings are innately religious; we have a belief system. It doesn’t have to be a theist form, necessarily. But we need a belief system, some framework on which to hang our behavior.
I have a theory that self-made, first-generation actresses don’t feel entitled to success.
There’s something about ‘Strictly Come Dancing.’ Everywhere I go, people wish me good luck; cabbies toot their horns. It’s lovely. I have a theory: in straitened times, there’s nothing like a bit of unapologetic escapism.
You buy any book on color theory today, and it’s just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind.
Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.
Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women’s rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.
If it hadn’t worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I’d be happy there, too.
Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ is the family’s practice as well as its theory. Even with today’s scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree.
I didn’t know so well chess theory, the theory of chess openings. And so, of course I knew the theory, but not on the level of the best players, so this was my… this was always my weakness.
I’ve developed a theory that there’s an inverse relationship between money and imagination. That if you’ve got lots of imagination then you don’t really need much money, and if you’ve got lots of money then you won’t bother with much imagination.
I’m very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don’t really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It’s about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
Electromagnetic theory and experiment gave us the telephone, radio, TV, computers, and made the internal combustion engine practical – thus, the car and airplane, leading inevitably to the rocket and outer-space exploration.
Our best theory of describing space at a fundamental level is probably string theory.
Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
The Omega Point Theory can be a solid foundation of support for all of the great human religions.
I engage in the use of game theory. Game theory is a branch of mathematics, and that means, sorry, that even in the study of politics, math has come into the picture. We can no longer pretend that we just speculate about politics; we need to look at this in a rigorous way.
Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.
Because of the Turing completeness theory, everything one Turing-complete language can do can theoretically be done by another Turing-complete language, but at a different cost. You can do everything in assembler, but no one wants to program in assembler anymore.
The Internet is a really big tent. In theory, it can support the full range of models, one of which is, ‘Here’s my information and I’m happy you can use it,’ and the other one is, ‘Here’s the information and you can’t have it unless you pay me for it,’ and perhaps some things in-between. There is a full spectrum of models.
I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.
I have this theory that alpha males are actually not alpha males. They’re actually very scared – particularly scared of competition from a lot of men.
Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an ‘objective’ ontological reality.
If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.
With couture, you feel obligated to design something modern each season, but with Theyskens Theory, I don’t question anything. I’m thinking of what I’d like to wear.
Modern theory is about objects lower than man; even stars, being common things, are lower than man.
I’ve purposely stayed away from reading much about postmodern theory, and most everything I have read just bored me to tears. I don’t think anybody’s written about it, or very few have, with any verve.
Time travel and teleportation will have to wait. It may take centuries to master these technology. But within the coming decades, we will understand dark matter, perhaps test string theory, find planets which can harbor life, and maybe have Brain 2.0, i.e. our consciousness on a disk which will survive even after we die.
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages… all forms of communication – visual, tactile, and so on… There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you’d need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don’t have anything like that.
In a certain sense, aspects of my solo playing were developed in order to test the theory about how long particular elements could be, as parts of so-called free improvisations.
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
I think it is widely agreed that Carl Steinitz, over the 50 years he taught at Harvard, has been one of the most important figures in influencing the theory and practice of landscape architecture and the application of computer technology to planning.
At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.
The scaling theory of localization demonstrated that the disorder-induced M-I transition was a true phase transition with a well defined critical point.
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
I started working and publishing in price theory by 1938.
In short, both experience and economic theory imply that the US could now t to a more competitive dollar without experiencing either increased inflation or decreased economic growth.
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for.
I think when you’re learning an instrument, you are restricted because much of it is the noise of individual theory and your ability to play the instrument.
I’m a big fan of outlining. Here’s the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I’m liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages.
An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
I’m from the Midwest, and I loved my family. I had a very good time as a child, but I was also – I have a theory about Jews growing up in the Midwest, that there is an ultimately sort of wonderful avoidance of a lot of things, and a great acceptance of whatever is happening.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
A scientist worthy of a lab coat should be able to make original discoveries while wearing a clown suit, or give a lecture in a high squeaky voice from inhaling helium. It is written nowhere in the math of probability theory that one may have no fun.
The one thing we do know is that the chemical imbalance theory – the theory that people get depressed when they don’t have enough serotonin in their brain – we know that that’s wrong.
Einstein’s theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum – for small things.
I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student – he should not go in to acting.
Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world – Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
Even before I came to Chicago, I had gotten interested in the existence of dispersion of prices under conditions which economic theory said would yield a single price.
I developed the Clock Theory to help me time records; you know, spin the record back two revolutions or whatever and then play the break, spin the other one back two, play, like that.
You know, some of the good part of blog theory was that blogs would be like diaries that the world could read. They would be spontaneous, whatever pops into your mind, as a diary would be.
My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books – not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today’s reader is smarter.
To an intellectual who is adrift in politics, a theory is an aim; to a true politician his theory is a boundary.
When the basic status of a theory is clear, and all that needs to be cleared are details, you can collaborate. But if the main structure of a hypothesis isn’t established, and you want to change the paradigm – like it was the case in the 1960s – it’s better to work alone.
Many scholars working in the humanities have already shown interest in brain research. For years, contemporary theory in the humanities has left the body and biology out of their discussions.
A theory not only explains the world we see, it lets us imagine other worlds, and, even more significantly, lets us act to create those worlds. Developing everyday theories, like scientific theories, has allowed human beings to change the world.
I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists.
Religion is not theory – it is life. It is not intellectual conviction – it is divine humanity, and nothing else.
A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.
The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention argues that no two countries that are both part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they are each part of that supply chain.
Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it’s all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write.
I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
When we first started ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ I would get incredibly nervous because it’s such a big show and I was just out of graduate school. I’d come in and have this huge responsibility for the one line that everyone hopes will bring down the house.
My first ambition in life, I made up my mind I was going to become Miles Davis. I studied music, music theory. I played trumpet for nine years. One day, my mother explained, ‘You can’t be Miles Davis. There’s one, and he’s got that job.’
The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.
Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art’s version of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. It’s the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly, decisively, for good.
At the time, my personal research objectives were to provide Keynesian economics with more rigorous foundations and to tighten and elaborate the logic of macroeconomic and monetary theory.
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.
I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form. I’ve had some fantastically good people help me make the movies.
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event – not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics – then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light.
I tend to gravitate toward conflicted characters, and a character who is exploring chaos theory and population control and the difficulties of love and family is pretty rich.
In its first 30 years of existence, up to the mid 1970s, the practical applications of game theory were very limited, probably as a result of excessive preoccupation by game theorists with cooperative solution concepts.
Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language.
The ‘science’ for which the United States is respected has nothing to do with the unscientific and baseless theory of evolution.
Science doesn’t work by voting. Did people vote on the theory of relativity? No! It’s either right or it’s wrong. Do we vote on whether genetics is a good theory or not? Of course not.
I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.
My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!
There is the theory… that you live in two places: You either live in fear, or you live in love.
The intersection of political analysis and Internet theory is a busy crossroad of cliche, where familiar rhetorical vehicles – decentralized authority, emergent leadership, empowered grass roots – create a ceaseless buzz.
My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.
Most mental health professionals, including clinicians and researchers, endorse the deficit theory. They’re convinced that we wage war simply because we don’t know how to make love. We desperately want loving, satisfying relationships but lack the skills we need to develop them.
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it.
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn’t go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.
When I was at primary school, we had this theory that if you ate an egg, it meant you’d get pregnant and give birth to a chicken or another egg. It was something we dared together. I avoided eggs for years, but now they’re my favourite food.
As you say, the way string theory requires all these extra dimensions and this comes from certain consistency requirements about how string should behave and so on.
Science has authority, not because of white coats, or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.
When I was in college, I was a semiotics major, which is this hopelessly pretentious body of French literary theory.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
For decades, my research was driven by outstanding problems in macroeconomics: mainly growth theory and employment theory.
Commodity exchanges have a lot of advantages. One, you are helping transparency. Two, they are not political. It’s institutional building. It can survive any environment, in theory.
If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.
We don’t regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth.
My ‘Big Bang Theory’ costar Johnny Galecki went off the grid. He bought a huge ranch and goes there every weekend. He keeps telling me to do the same thing, but I don’t know if I’m that committed. The Valley is as far off the grid as I’m going to go.
To put it bluntly, there isn’t one economic theory that can single-handedly explain Singapore’s success; its economy combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial; reality is complex.
I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.
It was very useful to learn the history, the theory, and the art of building from a practical background.
But the nature of my main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects.
The full name of string theory is really superstring theory. The ‘super’ stands for this feature called supersymmetry, which, without getting into any details, predicts that for every known particle in the world, there should be a partner particle, the so-called supersymmetric partner.
I’m not that well-versed in literary theory – I don’t know what it is.
I write music that sounds complex but isn’t. I frankly never think in terms of theory.
The most important single thing about string theory is that it’s a highly mathematical theory, and the mathematics holds together in a very tight and consistent way. It contains in its basic structure both quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity. That’s big news.
Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.
When I was at Berkeley, the framework of quantum field theory could calculate the dynamics of electromagnetism. It could roughly describe the motion of the weak nuclear force, radiation. But it hit a brick wall with the strong interaction, the binding force.
In theory, I always think I should totally go back to school, because I don’t want to start sinking slowly… I want to learn, blah blah blah. Then I think about actually going and sitting in classes and, man, it sounds terrible.
What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I’ve always rebelled against theory.
The cyclic universe theory predicts no gravitational waves from the early universe.
Britain is still seen as a beacon for decency, for democracy, for vigorous judges upholding the rule of law and, dare I say it, a free press. I respect the press in theory, but when you see some of the things it writes about you, it’s not exactly a happy relationship.
I’ve never been much for theory and scales.
My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.
That’s where I get my whole music theory from, my pops and my grandfather.
Believing that the power to destroy belongs to the Creator alone I affirm… that any theory which, when carried out, demands the annihilation of force, is necessarily erroneous.
When you come up with a theory, you fall in love with the beauty the simplicity and elegance of it. But then you have to get a sheet of paper and pencil and crack out all the details. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. Because you have to prove it.
You know, I’m not big on conspiracy theory. It does really kind of get my blood going when I find out there really are conspiracies that actually happened.
We really set out in all our books to say something. Every one is an effort to bring the reader over and show them our theory as to why what we’re talking about needs to be talked about.
I wanted as little formal linguistic theory as I could get by with. I wanted the basic linguistic training to do a translation of the New Testament.
In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place.
If you take Darwin’s theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify a number of very horrendous things.
The biggest thing is to create a product that consumers find useful. As more and more people like something, it becomes harder and harder to have a conspiracy theory about it.
Physicists are interested in measuring neutrino properties because they tell us about the structure of the Standard Model, the well-tested theory that describes matter’s most basic elements and interactions.
Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.
I think almost all strategic problems could at least be improved upon if people would do more careful game-theoretic analysis. The reason game theory works in predicting is because people intuit how to behave game-theoretically.
If you sing beautifully about nothing, no one will listen. If you sing badly about great stuff, no one will listen. Ideas are everywhere, but my theory is that a writer doesn’t just think of an idea: they perform them.
In general, signalling theory says that if you have a good way of proving something and a noisy way of proving something, and you choose the noisy way, that means chances are it’s because you couldn’t do the good way in the first place.
Moreover, in the experimental sciences, the scientific fraternity must test a new theory to destruction, if possible.
I became intrigued with colour theory. The absurd pronouncements of the Colour Institute, a group that decides what colours are hot each year or season, amused me.
You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called ‘scientific theory’ that fits every scenario. Climate change, as they’ve defined it, can never be disproved.
Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
Linkin Park has been a band for such a long time, for me, in my eyes. I was 16 years old when I first heard them. I heard ‘Hybrid Theory,’ and I was floored at what I was listening to. It was angry yet melodic, it had hip-hop and it had – it was just different, good. Good songwriting.
There is a gulf between the high value Americans put on life in theory and its cheapness in practice.
