Quotes About Theory

It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.

Many consider the publication of this book to be the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.   This has been debated.  However, Copernicus' theory stimulated the astronomical work of some of the most important minds of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, upon which later natural philosophers, including Newton, were able to build modern science.

But we also need, among other things, to abandon conventional planning ideas about city neighborhoods. The 'ideal' neighborhood of planning and zoning theory, too large in scale to possess any competence or meaning as a street neighborhood, is at the same time too small in scale to operate as a district. It is unfit for anything. It will not serve as even a point of departure. Like the belief in medical bloodletting, it was a wrong turn in the search for understanding.

Such streets need controls to defend them from the ruin that completely permissive diversity might indeed bring them. But the controls needed are not controls on kinds of uses. The controls needed are controls on the scale of street frontage permitted to a use. This is so obvious and so ubiquitous a city problem that one would think its solution must be among the concerns of zoning theory. Yet the very existence of the problem is not even recognized in zoning theory.

I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you're bent over about the color, don't leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.

The dancers finished thier set, and one immediately strolled over to our table and straddled Ranger. Want a private party? she asked. Not tonight, Ranger said. He handed her a twenty, and she left. What about the cat-feeding theory? I asked him. Out the window.

Theory and interpretation, far from threatening works of art, keep them alive.

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.

The beautiful part of the cloud is, you know, it's unlimited capacity, in theory.

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.

There is no way to order chaos. It's the fundamental theory at the beginning and end of everything; it's the ultimate law of nature. There's no way to win against unpredictability, to suit up completely against accidents.

I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.

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.

I have always been averse to theorizing about the art or craft of biography. Like Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, who offers the cautionary analogy of the biographical centipede unsure of her next step because of too much cerebration, I have made it my practice to let the facts find the theory.

Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

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.

I've got a theory: if you love your workspace, you'll love your work a little more.

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Theory is knowledge that doesn't work. Practice is when everything works and you don't know why.

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price.

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

Always think about practice... theory is not the endpoint of work, it is the work along the way to work.