Theory Quotes

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.

It is probably safe to say that all the changes of factual knowledge which have led to the relativity theory, resulting in a very great theoretical development, are completely trivial from any point of view except their relevance to the structure of a theoretical system.

Essential to the theory of evolution is the premise that everything has come into being by itself.

After developing a primitive theory (1968) I therefore did not pursue this subject. However, the work was taken up by others and in 1974 the first experiments were done in the ISR.

I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.

Nevertheless, the realization that breaking a pencil point would have far less disastrous consequences played little or no role, I believe, in this decision to explore theory!

The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can.

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

Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.

I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom.

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

A theory must be tempered with reality.

The final outcome cannot be known, either to the originator of a new theory, or to his colleagues and critics, who are bent on falsifying it. Thus, the scientific innovator may feel all the more lonely and uncertain.

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language.

Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

Architecture theory is very interesting.

My theory is that balance is key - nothing in excess.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that.

A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.