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.
