Quotes About Theory

The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

With the jam bands I've seen, it's about music, and it's about theory, and it's about making everyone feel better with music.

Knowledge is power. The real test of knowledge is not whether it is true but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theory is 100% correct. Truth, consequently, is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge.

But of one thing I am satisfied, that the reason for which a vacuum was introduced by Leucippus and Democritus (namely, that without it the same bodies could not embrace and fill sometimes larger and sometimes smaller spaces) is a false one. For matter is clearly capable of folding and unfolding itself in space, within certain limits, without the interposition of a vacuum; nor is there in air two thousand times as much of vacuity as there is in gold.

The hallmark of a successful theory is that it predicts correctly facts that were not known when the theory was presented, or, better still, which were then known incorrectly. A good theory should have at least two characteristics: it should be in sharp contrast to at least one alternative idea and it should make predictions which are testable.

Os economistas baseiam toda uma teoria de comportamento social nesta premissa individualista. A teoria económica da ação coletiva defende que os indivíduos se agregam em grupos sobretudo como um meio de maximizar os seus próprios interesses individuais e não por qualquer motivo de sociabilidade natural.

We need, in other words, a better theory of the human soul.

Gould was clearly the expert taxonomist, but it was Darwin who proposed the radical notion: Was it possible for a species of birds to split into two (or more) species if the birds were isolated on separate islands? This notion eventually became the basis for what may be considered the most significant scientific revolution of our time, the theory of evolution.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. [Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co]

The specific murderers of the SS therefore hide even today behind the collective guilt theory.

Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable.

In Buddhist theory, action exists first and because action happens, the people and things that do that action appear. It's weird, I know.

Giving her ten thousand Lifeless is enough to make even me consider my drunk-monkey theory." "The one who chooses names and titles of the Returned?" "Exactly," Lightsong said. "I've actually considered expanding the theory. I am now proposing to believe that God-or the universe, or time, or whatever you think controls all of this-is all really just a drunk monkey.

What do we call a story that's based on limited real data and imagined data and blended into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality? A conspiracy theory.

to the conspiratorial mind, shit never just happens,' the complexities of human life are reduced to produce theories that are 'always consoling in their simplicity" bad things do not happen because of a wildly complex swirl of abstract historical and social variables. They happen because bad men live to stalk our happiness. And you can fight, and possibly even defeat, bad men. If you can read the hidden story

We should not test and build on theories that are just conjecture—especially when it comes to hypothesizing about underrepresented groups while knowing very little about their stories and lived experiences.

Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice.

Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Theory is the best guide for experiment—that were it not for theory and the problems and hypotheses that come out of it, we would not know the points we wanted to verify, and hence would experiment aimlessly

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge.

That is to say, he had no theory at all, except to penetrate to the very essence of things and, in the light of each fresh revelation to so live his life that there would be a minimum of discord between the truths which were revealed to him and the exemplification of these truths in action.