Theory Quotes

“Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.”
― Émile Durkheim

“أكمل الدكتور حكيم كلامه فقال: "من أكثر تعريفات النجاح إقناعاً من وجهة نظري هو: "الوصول لأي هدف ، بعد السعي إليه" ..
إن هذا التعريف يلقي الضوء على أهم عناصر النجاح:
أولاً ، السعي نحو الهدف ..
ثانياً: الوصول إليه و تحقيقه.”
― إيهاب فكري, 4 شارع النجاح

“If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an ‘oomph,’ this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, ‘Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.”
― Alan H. Guth

“Theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing.”
― Jean-Martin Charcot

“The fact is that sooner or later, Andrew Wakefield will be exonerated, his theory will be accepted, and a vaccine-autism connection will be proven.”
― F.E. Yazbak M.D. F.A.A.P

“A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existing theory cannot be overstated. Arthur Eddington once said you should never believe any experiment until it has been confirmed by theory, but this humorous view has a reality that cannot be discounted.”
― Michael Crichton, Travels

“Scientists do not collect data randomly and utterly comprehensively. The data they collect are only those that they consider *relevant* to some hypothesis or theory.”
― David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art

“This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.”
― Antoine Lavoisier

“Reward theory. Some people just aren't worth your tears.”
― Janelle Carreon

“If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.”
― James Richardson, Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays

“I am now convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evidence of the discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The isolation and counting of gaseous ions, on the one hand, which have crowned with success the long and brilliant researches of J.J. Thomson, and, on the other, agreement of the Brownian movement with the requirements of the kinetic hypothesis, established by many investigators and most conclusively by J. Perrin, justify the most cautious scientist in now speaking of the experimental proof of the atomic nature of matter, The atomic hypothesis is thus raised to the position of a scientifically well-founded theory, and can claim a place in a text-book intended for use as an introduction to the present state of our knowledge of General Chemistry.”
― Wilhelm Ostwald, Grundriss Der Allgemeinen Chemie...

“One of the recent arguments from design, that based on the so-called fine-tuning life of some fundamental physical constants, founders on the following objections: an extremely small prior probability merited by the God of theism in light – if that is the right word – of the Problem of Evil; the fact that it is not unreasonable to place a substantial probability on the hypothesis that a future theory will fix those values; and the sheer incoherence of computations of the ‘chances’ of fine-tuning were there no fine-tuner.”
― Colin Howson, Objecting to God

“Más realidades hay en la experiencia que en la mejor de las teorías.”
― Fernando Araya

“Theory shows a way to a goal, but it is not the goal.
Theory offers security, but there are no secure theories.
Theories shed light on the past, but where there is light, there are shadows.
Theory building is an enterprise of such noble stature that the only human activity held in higher regard is theory destruction.”
― D.A. Blankinship, The Scoloderus Conspiracy

“What believer of faith among us can claim to understand the exact mechanistic structure of a world created by a god/God?”
― Kevin Michel, Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams

“It’s one thing to be given a big boxful of theory and quite another to make an engine out of it.”
― Alastair Reynolds, On the Steel Breeze

“The discovery of the telephone has made us acquainted with many strange phenomena. It has enabled us, amongst other things, to establish beyond a doubt the fact that electric currents actually traverse the earth's crust. The theory that the earth acts as a great reservoir for electricity may be placed in the physicist's waste-paper basket, with phlogiston, the materiality of light, and other old-time hypotheses.”
― William Henry Preece

“Darwin's theory was received in Russia with profound sympathy. While in Western Europe it met firmly established old traditions which it had first to overcome, in Russia its appearance coincided with the awakening of our society after the Crimean War and here it immediately received the status of full citizenship and ever since has enjoyed widespread popularity.”
― Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevskiĭ