Quotes About Theories

The problem with the world is not a shortage of brilliant theories or feel-good slogans. The problem is that we confuse proliferation of progressive terminology with profound empathy and purposeful engagement.

Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to pre-existing theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece because masterpieces make their own rules.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

A defense [of religion] is needed because none has been forthcoming. The discussion has been ceded to men who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt. Their books have in recent years poured from every press, and although differing widely in their style, they are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false.

Although our modern way of thinking has, of course, changed a great deal relative to the ancient one, the two have had one key feature in common: i.e. they are both generally 'blinkered' by the notion that theories give true knowledge about 'reality as it is'. Thus, both are led to confuse the forms and shapes induced in our perceptions by theoretical insight with a reality independent of our thought and our way of looking.

Don't tell me I'm sentimental, you sons of bitches. You are contemptible, your dishonesty is contemptible, your careful plodding with words, to keep them safely captured inside your silly little theories are contemptible, but I don't hate you, because each of you is a sad little pompous son of a bitch, with a chair at a university, and you are fighting bravely to seem to be somebody.

Whatever may be your surmises about the enemy or the future, your own action is circumscribed within practical limits. There are only a certain number of alternatives open. Also, you live in a world of reality where theories are constantly being corrected and curbed by experiment. Resultant facts accumulate and govern to a very large extent the next decision.

Science, according to Kuhn, has not actually followed the classic myth of steady evolution of accumulating theories based on deeper and deeper probing of the evidence. Rather, science has sometimes made huge transitions as one paradigm, which may have stood for centuries, is found to be inadequate and crashes to the ground, to be replaced by another.

What sort of scientists are they whose main technique is sociability and whose main instrument is themselves? What can we expect from them but charged prose and pretty theories?

The critic can affect my aesthetic theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience--that is to say, they must be subjective.

Friedell caught the essential truth about people prone to catch-all theories: they aren't in search of the truth, they're in search of themselves.

In essence our failure was a vivid demonstration, which I have never forgotten, that theories, however plausible and "obviously" valid, can be destroyed totally by the obstinate facts of the real world. Davis had brought us an unbeatable scheme for raising cattle profitably. The cattle had a different scheme. No doubt my later deep skepticism of the a priorism of mainstream economics had some of its origins in this experience.

Here you have learned the theories of life," continued the Headmaster, resuming the thread of his discourse, "but after all, life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons.

There are several theories as to why the reappearance of Onoda created such a stir. Mine is that Onoda showed signs of being something that defeat in World War II had deprived Japan of: a genuine war hero.

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.

When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full posession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims-- these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.

That Obama would embrace rather than repudiate these Bush-Cheney "war on terror" principles became evident almost immediately after he was inaugurated. Within the first several weeks of his presidency, his top legal officials explicitly advocated several of the most extremist and controversial theories of power that defined the Bush administration's approach to terrorism.

No; it is not well to rule one's self by theories. We think, when we are very young, that theories, or "philosophies" as we term them, are guiding lights, held out by Wisdom over the pathway of life; we learn, as we grow older, that, too often, they are mere will-o'-the-wisps, hovering over dismal swamps where dead men's bones lie rotting.

I try to see each new season as a new challenge because I have a new team to work with, new opponents to encounter, and often new ideas and theories to try

the relevance of epistemology for the study of psychology and psychological development is that epistemological assumptions often remain tacit. Practically, this amounts to many psychologists basing their theories on assumptions that originate in the empiricist tradition (Piaget, 1970/1972a, p. 10).

But with Freddy I seemed to have the best sort of conversations, where our talk became exploratory and would lead on to new ideas, like thinking aloud, and in the process of clarifying improvisatory theories I always made useful discoveries about what I thought and felt.

There could, in principle, be an institution that looked like what we call science but in which there was no genuine responsiveness to the world. Experiments would be no more than expensive PR exercises, and theories would change via a process of negotiation between factions. How do we know that our own science is not like this?