Quotes About Theories

Animals in pens have lots of time to develop theories, said the Cow, I've heard more than one clever creature draw a connection between the rise of tiktokism and the erosion of traditional Animal labour. We weren't beasts of burden, but we were good reliable labourers. If we were made redundant in the workforce, it was only a matter of time before we'd be socially redundant too.

Ideas and theories, I have suggested, are like quicksilver in our hands. We can lose an idea altogether by being too tight fisted or too open handed, but if we carry an idea we cannot avoid imposing our own shape upon it. And when we do, we ought to know what we have done, for only in this way does the practice of history raise the consciousness of us all.

Before long I was pretty nearly a devotee, and would listen for hours like a schoolboy to art theories and philosophic speculations wild enough to qualify him for the Danvers asylum.

With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.

Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate.

Theories, books and ideas created within ivory towers had real-world consequences.

The menstruation taboo is ancient, and there are so many theories about it. For some, it is fear of blood, and for some, period blood is toxic. If you read the theories about menstruation, you might even laugh.

We know that acid rain has had no significant environmental effect on trees or forests in the United States... It is based on popular myths and half-baked theories.

In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false.

Children make theories when they are confused or anxious.

Our technologies have got ahead of our theories. Our theories are still fundamentally reductionist, componential and linear. Our technologies, however, are increasingly complex, emergent and non-linear.

It is a scientifically proven fact that all scientifically proven facts have originated from original and thereby unproven theories.

Science similarly contains within itself the devices for correcting the illusions of science. That is its crowning glory. When we come upon intellectual endeavours that contain no such devices—one might cite psychoanalysis, grand political theories, 'new age' science, creationist science—we need not be interested.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I am not interested in theories, she had taught herself to say, for fear of being invaded by something other than a dream. But she was not certain what she meant and not sure that it was true.

La Ciencia en ningún momento está totalmente en lo cierto, pero rara vez está completamente equivocada y tiene en general mayores posibilidades de estar en lo cierto que las teorías no científicas.

There is, it is true, an idealistic theory according to which democracy is the best form of government. I think myself that this theory is true. But there is no department of practical politics where idealistic theories are strong enough to cause great changes; when great changes occur, the theories which justify them are always a camouflage for passion. And the passion that has given driving force to democratic theories is undoubtedly the passion of envy.

There is no department of practical politics where idealistic theories are strong enough to cause great changes; when great changes occur, the theories which justify them are always a camouflage for passion. And the passion that has given driving force to democratic theories is undoubtedly the passion of envy.

In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second.

McKinsey partners tend to be designers of ditches, not diggers of ditches. When it comes to executing their lofty theories, well, consultants lean toward leaving those messy realities to the companies themselves.

scientific theories cannot be deduced by purely mathematical reasoning.

When roles shift, ideologies have to shift, and ideologies hate to shift. The workaround is pragmatism—"a practical way of thinking concerned with results rather than with theories and principles." The shift is deeper than moving from one ideology to another; the shift is to discard ideology entirely.

I emphasized the importance of essays since, as scientists, they would one day have to write papers to prove their theories. But in reality, nothing was ever proven in their world, since everything was at the whim of the Great Leader. Their writing skills were as stunted as their research skills. Writing inevitably consisted of an endless repetition of his achievements, none of which was ever verified, since they lacked the concept of backing up a claim with evidence.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.