Quotes About Theory

Acting on the theory that sometimes luck is better than work, I randomly called several people named Dattilo in Kentucky. All were unfailingly polite, and none knew anything about a major with their last name who died in World War II. I also discovered that more Dattilos lived in Kentucky than I would have imagined.

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.

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.

I have a theory and I really believe it. I think your worst weakness can become your greatest single strength.

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.

My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.

If the titles are treated in a straightforward way, nobody is really interested. The theory is that in those two or three minutes, you can set the tone for the films, so that when the story begins the audience hits the ground running.

You can't get along without a knowledge of the principles and rules governing the influence of one color upon another. A mechanic might as well try to get along without tools.

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.

The fallacy of the neoclassicals is their tenet that total employment, though hit by shocks, can be said always to be heading back to some normal level.

The standard growth theory tells us that economic growth in per capita basis comes from mainly two sources: capital deepening and total factor productivity growth, or TFP growth.

There's a theory that says that life is based on a competition and the struggle and the fight for survival, and it's interesting because when you look at the fractal character of evolution, it's totally different. It's based on cooperation among the elements in the geometry and not competition.

The theory of evolution is totally inadequate to explain the origin and manifestation of the inorganic world.

If we zipped around at precisely the speed of light, we would never experience any duration at all, no matter how we traveled.

STUDYING TIME MACHINES IN FLATLAND

As far as quantum field theory is concerned, a human being or the center of a star isn't all that different from empty space.

The most famous story about gravity involves Isaac Newton and an apple that supposedly fell on his head, inspiring him to concoct his theory of universal gravitation. (It's mostly famous because Newton himself couldn't stop telling it later in life, in an unnecessary attempt to add some extra juice to his reputation as a genius.)

wormholes don't grow on trees.

To a physicist, a "vacuum" is not a machine that cleans your floors, nor does it even necessarily mean "empty space." It's simply "the lowest-energy state of a theory.

Neutrino masses aren't completely understood as yet, so let's pretend that they don't interact with the Higgs, although the jury is still out.)

As impressive as matrix mechanics was, it suffered from a severe marketing flaw. The mathematical formalism was highly abstract and difficult to understand. Einstein's reaction to the theory was typical: A veritable sorcerer's calculation. This is sufficiently ingenious and protected by its great complexity to be immune to any proof of its falsity. This from the guy who had proposed describing space-time in terms of non-Euclidian geometry.

Obviously the correspondence needs to be nonlocal; you can't match up individual points in a four-dimensional space to points in a five-dimensional space. But you can imagine matching up states in one theory, defined at some time, to states in the other theory. If that doesn't convince you that spacetime is not fundamental, I can't imagine what would.

He mistakenly caused an earthquake that engulfed the surrounding city blocks, breaking windows and shaking the plaster off of the walls. He announced that he had discovered how to turn the earth into a giant tuning fork, and that, in theory, the principles could shatter the Empire State Building or even possibly cause the earth to "split open like an apple.

Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.