Difference Between Theory and Practice

Difference Between Theory And Practice
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
-- YogiBerra
http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_berra_yogi.html
http://www.quotemeonit.com/berra.html
Another source, http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Chuck_Reid/, assigns this quote to
Chuck Reid.
Zaadz.com says this is a quote of Jan van de Snepscheut, a dutch
Mathematician. http://www.zaadz.com/quotes/authors/jan_van_de_snepscheut/
"It may come out all right in practice, but it'll never work in theory!"
"In theory, practice is simple." (Source: TrygveReenskaug)
"Reality is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of ugly facts."
-- RobertGlass?
That is based or misquoted from Aldos Huxley. The quote is:
"The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
-- Thomas Huxley
The paraphrase is pretty pithy, though.
 So is it Aldos or Thomas?
Most likely it's Thomas, and it's "Aldous" Huxley (AldousHuxley), who was an author.
Thomas Henry Huxley was an outspoken defender of Darwin's theory of evolution in the mid
1800's. Seehttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/thuxley.html for Thomas Huxley bio
information.
In theory, this quote actually originated somewhere. In practice it is impossible for us to
know... -- JohnClonts
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. -- AlbertEinstein
More "theory" quotes at... http://www.quotemeonit.com/theory.html [BrokenLink? All I see is
an advertisement on this page.]
I rather like RobertGrossblatt?'s variation: theory and reality are only theoretically
related. It's vastly more succinct and far more pithy.
Clearly what we need is a theory compiler that automatically transforms to practice on its
output! -- DougMerritt (a big fan of automation and compilers, but a little hazy on practicality,
thus the wish)
"The DifferenceBetweenTheoryAndPractice is in theory somewhat smaller than in practice"

was my signature on the usenet for many years. I know I've heard it somewhere, but I can't
tell where. Does anyone know? -- FrankWestphal
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." - Donald E.
Knuth (DonKnuth)
Nonsense. If reality disagrees with theory, reality wins. Always. That's science.
Maybe a DifferenceBetweenTheoryAndBelief? -- an exploration of the
PhilosophyOfScience?
I don't quite feel like starting those pages, but I can recommend an excellent read:
The Meaning of It All By RichardFeynman
ISBN 0738201669 Collection of Lectures
"Reality wins. Always. That's science."

In theory, that's science. But in reality, science is sometimes practiced differently.
-- FalkBruegmann
Some miscellaneous thoughts on theory and reality.
 The purpose of theory is to predict future observations.

 Theory is validated by how well it explains past observations.
 The predictive nature of theory is dependent upon how well the future observations
reflect the past data selected for validation. The more the future differs from the past,
the greater uncertainty surrounds the prediction.
I really need to graduate. I've lost the ability to discern theory from practice
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Quotes About Theory
Quotes tagged as "theory" (showing 1-30 of 166)
“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.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
tags: data, deduction, information, mistake, theories, theory
732 likes
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“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force
tags: causation, fact, relief, results, sea, theory
412 likes
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“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.”
― John Wilmot
tags: aging, children, fatherhood, marriage, parenting, theory
161 likes
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“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”
― Yogi Berra
tags: humor, theory, think
121 likes
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“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions
too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take
money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words
are "coins" for real things.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
tags: concepts, philosophy, theory, words
114 likes
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“I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look
'intelligent' anymore.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
tags: above-and-beyond, assurance, certainty, concealment, confidence, foolishness, humility, intelligence,philosophy, pretentiousness, self-
assurance, theory, within
104 likes
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“Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the
fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be
achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God
does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of
inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and
man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so
imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another,
which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the
time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no
ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all
matters, with a mere theory?
Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in
the past... The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of
actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason,
and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing
miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power...
Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from
mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare
that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going.
There is nothing beyond that.
Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in
vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they
are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.
There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have
not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of
wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.
[Columbian Magazine interview]”

― Thomas A. Edison
tags: destruction, falsehood, gods, immortality, inspirational, makeshift, miracles, naturalism, reason, satisfaction,science, soul, study, superstitiou
s, theology, theory, truth, wonder
79 likes
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“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither
understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
― Karl Popper
tags: science, theory, wisdom
64 likes
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“I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.”
― Meryl Streep
tags: charlie-rose, dreams, meryl-streep, movies, theory, yourself
64 likes
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“Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it
we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a
good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle
emotions.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
tags: commitment, complication, dedication, devil, emotions, energy, fickle, forgiveness, laziness, life, love,perseverance, persistent, theory
59 likes
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“Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
tags: theory
54 likes
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“Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.”

― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
tags: absurd, absurdity, art, artist, ecstasy, experiment, experimentation, insane, insanity, intellectual, intellectualism,intelligence, madness, mind,
out-of-my-mind, outrageous, philosophy, theory, thinking, thought, too-much
50 likes
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“It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again."
Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and
everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts
that will not fit in that are significant.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
tags: detective, fact, mystery, theory
44 likes
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“It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we
touch the hem of truth.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
tags: discovery, imagination, theory
34 likes
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“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of
theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”
― H.L. Mencken
tags: religion, science, theory, truth
31 likes
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“An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school
seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?”
tags: attention, attention-span, confidence, genius, gifted, imagination, learning, school, students, teaching, theory
24 likes
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“The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created
the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.”
tags: agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, belief, beliefs, creation, faith, god, origin, science, theism, theories, theory,universe
23 likes
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“The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth
tags: absurdity, contradiction, doctrines, paradox, practice, rules, satire, theory
22 likes
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“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant
and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how
efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an
inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason
justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does
not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by
many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by
justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.”
― John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
tags: freedom, individuals, justice, liberalism, philosophy, social-institutions, society, theory, truth
20 likes
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“Philosophy is not in a state of external reflection on other domains, but in a state of active and internal
alliance with them, and it is neither more abstract nor more difficult.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
tags: theory
17 likes
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“You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.
You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see
something through it.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
tags: knowledge, theory
16 likes
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“I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and
physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that
means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too.”
― Philip Plait, Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...
tags: science, theory
15 likes
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“It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats,
it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
tags: theory
14 likes
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“If I were to vote, I would intentionally vote for the goofiest candidate. It is my theory that when the people
can outwit the leader, the more respected their voices will be.”
tags: candidate, election, freedom, funny, funny-but-true, humor, leadership, masses, politics, respect, theory,tyranny, voice, voting
14 likes
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“The sentence completes its signification only with its last term.”
― Jacques Lacan
tags: theory
11 likes
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“BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?
DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?
BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.
DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...
BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!
DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins?
Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem
yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.
BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove
there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the
room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...
DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite:
theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.
BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be
mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any
more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.
DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always
had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science
proves that.
BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!
DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...
BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about
the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory?”
― Eugène Ionesco, Three Plays: Rhinoceros / The Chairs / The Lesson
tags: absurd, mass-opinion, practice, theory, truth
10 likes
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“It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the
more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to
this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: free-will, theory
8 likes
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“But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same.
Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle
is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.”
― William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
tags: psychology, reason, theory
8 likes
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“I can’t extrapolate a theory of what people would do based on the limited data set of what one person—
myself—would do. That’s why I need clones, so I can more accurately gauge what large crowds of people
would do in a given situation.”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.
tags: clones, crowds, predictions, theory
7 likes
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“He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an
insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were
based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of
exchange.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs
tags: banks, economic, money, theory
6 likes
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“Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'
Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?'
'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions,
and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?'
'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect,
considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance,
required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of
sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...'
'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human
creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his
omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things
that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at
first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms
that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which
was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.'
Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:
'There was Manicheanism...'
'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence
outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...'
Snow pondered for a while:
'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary.
If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the
course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your
god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this
despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just
philosophically but also mystically speaking.'
I kept on:
'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view,
but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The
times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his
cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he
would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--
apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the
being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born
somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him
putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...'
'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on
his altar.'
'If you're going to take what I say literally...'
...Snow asked abruptly:
'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'
'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose
passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris
tags: belief, conversation, creationism, despair, emotion, evolution, existence, existentialism, god, immortality,imperfection, mortality, mythology, p
hilosophy, religion, science, space, space-exploration, theology, theory, time,truth
22 likes
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“An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.”

― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered
tags: practice, theory
17 likes
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“If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf
symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
tags: albert-einstein, alone, discovery, einstein, foolish, fools, genius, hypothesis, lone, lone-wolf, loneliness, lonely,loners, perseverance, planet, r
epresent, representation, solitary, solitude, strength, symbol, symbolism, theory, true,truth, wisdom, wise, wise-man, wolf
16 likes
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“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
tags: fact, theory
16 likes
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“In ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or
female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was
happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut
everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the
upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
tags: explanation, life, love, religion, theory
12 likes
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“Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly.
In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.”
― Michael Crichton
tags: conjecture, guessing, scenario, scenarios, speculation, theories, theory
12 likes
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“The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of
being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just,
but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.”
tags: apologetics, content, contentment, dictator, gospel, honest, humble, humility, illustrate, illustration, imperfect,importance, justice, limitation, m
essage, prosperity, prosperity-gospel, reason, remembered, respect, story, success,theology, theory, ultimate, underdog
11 likes
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“Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God's name is the point of cultural studies?...At
that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their
pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we've been able to change
anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don't feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing,
theory has let you off the hook.”
― Stuart Hall
tags: critical-theory, cultural-studies, intellectualism, theory
10 likes
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“A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in
disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the
origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is
all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody
knows the answer to any of these topics.”
― Michael Crichton
tags: abiogenesis, brain, conjecture, consciousness, darwinism, evolution, extraterrestrial-life, guessing, human-behavior, ignorance, knowledge, l
anguage, origin-of-life, religion, science, seti, speculation, theories, theory
9 likes
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“If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather
than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of
information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied
immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands
human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued
survival.”
― N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics
tags: posthumanism, science, theory
8 likes
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“All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
tags: creation, imagination, theory
6 likes
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“The thing is, and here we come to E. Gorey's Great Simple Theory About Art (which he has never tried to
communicate to anybody else until now, so prepare for Severe Bafflement), that on the surface they are so
obviously those situations that it is very difficult to see that they really are about something else entirely.
This is the theory, incidentally, that anything is art, and it's the way I tell, is presumably about some certain
thing, but is really always about something else, and it's no good having one without the other, because if
you have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it's irritating.”
― Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer
tags: art, art-theory, but-is-it-art, theory
6 likes
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“In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.”
― William James
tags: harvard-professor-of-psychology, proof, religion, science, spirituality, theory
6 likes
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“He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want
and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern
development, and has not yet been understood.”
― E.M. Forster
tags: a-room-with-a-view, artists, complexity, friendship, music, musicians, psychology, puzzlement, theory,understanding
5 likes
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“Politics is for the moment and equation is for eternity.”
― Albert Einstein, The Quotable Einstein
tags: science, theory
5 likes
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“Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that
very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of
negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and
trivial in the face of the model itself.”
― Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
tags: criticism, revolution, theory
4 likes
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“My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably
eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous
legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas,
or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the
specific direction of being symmetrical.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
tags: carl-sagan, evidence, evolution, religion, science, sir-julian-huxley, theory
4 likes
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“Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne.”
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
tags: applied-science, practical-applications, practice, problem-solving, procrastination, theory
4 likes
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“Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
tags: fate, god, life, mind, soul, theory, thought, universal
3 likes
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“There is a common tendency to turn off one's imagination at certain points and refuse to contemplate the
possibility of having to do certain things and cope with the attendant moral problems. The things simply get
done by the social machine, and one can keep one's clear conscience and one's moral indignation
unsullied.”
― John Fraser, Violence in the Arts
tags: art, criticism, morality, philosophy, theory
3 likes
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“What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner
experience of being alive in a given time and place.”
― Elif Batuman
tags: literature, neuro-lit-crit, theory
3 likes
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“Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in
advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).”
― Bill Gaede
tags: conceptualizing, extinction, gaede, hypothesis, knowledge, prediction, proof, science, scientific-method, theory
2 likes
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“I still feel glad to emphasize the duty, the defining characteristic of the pure scientist—probably to be found
working in universities—who commit themselves absolutely to specialized goals, to seek the purest
manifestation of any possible phenomenon that they are investigating, to create laboratories that are far
more controlled than you would ever find in industry, and to ignore any constraints imposed by, as it were,
realism. Further down the scale, people who understand and want to exploit results of basic science have to
do a great deal more work to adapt and select the results, and combine the results from different sources, to
produce something that is applicable, useful, and profitable on an acceptable time scale.”
― C.A.R. Hoare
tags: academia, academic, research, theory
2 likes
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“Do not be afraid of the word 'theory'. Yes, it can sound dauntingly abstract at times, and in the hands of
some writers can appear to have precious little to do with the actual, visual world around us. Good theory
however, is an awesome thing. [...] But unless we actually use it, it borders on the metaphysical and might
as well not be used at all.”
― Richard Howells, Visual Culture
tags: abstract, art, metaphysics, theory
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“[According to 1348 theorists, poisoning of Christian water by Jews was the cause of Black Death.]
Even the poison used to contaminate the Christian water supply was described in meticulous detail. It was
"about the size of an egg," except when it was the "size of a nut" or a "large nut," "a fist" or "two fists"- and it
came packaged in "a leather pouch," except when it was packaged in "linen cloth," "a rag," or a "paper
coronet"; and the poison was variously made from lizards, frogs, and spiders- when it was not made from
the hearts of Christians and from Holy Communion wafers.”
― John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of
All Time
tags: communion-wafers, plague, theory
1 likes
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“…let us point out precisely the difficulties of empiricism as a theory of knowledge. First, it begins with
two fixed, unchangeable ultimates--mind and matter. Second, it asserts that knowledge is the agreement of
ideas with each other, in which case we are not dealing with nature or things at all, and consequently, have
left out one of our ultimates. Third, it then asserts (for it is essential that knowledge should somehow or
other be connected with things) that knowledge consists in the agreement between an idea and a thing; and
in this case we can never tell when the agreement takes place; and furthermore, it is impossible for ideas
and things to disagree, for, according to the theory, ideas are copies of things. This means that
empiricism can not account for the fact of error. Every theory of knowledge must make a place for error, for,
as is evident, error seems to be as industrious as truth.
Consequently, if knowledge actually does take place, if there is such an activity, thing, or relation as
knowledge, empiricism fails to give an account of it which is free from contradictions. The moral is, as the
stories in our school readers say, don't begin with fixed things, for they beguileth one into inconsistencies.”
― Holly Estil Cunningham
tags: empiricism, philosophy, theory
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“Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we got to the dull truth at last?"
"Oh, no," said Father Brown.
As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an
utterly impassive face, went on:
"I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles
with bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. But
we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?"
Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled down the long table.
[Ch.6]”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown
tags: theory
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“There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing,
because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is
the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and
every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.”
― Alasdair McIntyre
tags: ethics, theory
1 likes
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“Though his invention worked superbly [...] his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Peace War
tags: invention, praxis, theory, works
1 likes
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“It is the theory which decides what can be observed”

― Albert Einstein
tags: subject-and-object, theory
1 likes
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“Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really. There's no orthodoxy, as you have
it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible
pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you
like... We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy. Right practice rather then right belief. That's all. You
Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it's not important in the way you think. It's just poetry,
really, ways of talking about the inexpressible.”
― Hyam Maccoby
tags: catholicism, christianity, judaism, practice, theory
5 likes
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“Science is not about making predictions or performing experiments. Science is about explaining.”
― Bill Gaede
tags: experiment, fact, gaede, hypothesizing, mathematical-physics, prediction, religion, science, scientific-method,theory
4 likes
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“Žižek seems to have got Hitchcock out of his system, if not out of his unconscious—one never does that.”
― Fredric Jameson
tags: film, hitchcock, theory, unconscious, zizek
3 likes
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“Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best
you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for
example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well
as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together
to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are
not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else
come out right, in addition.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
tags: doubt, scientific-method, theory
3 likes
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“Proof' is the hallmark of religion.”

― Bill Gaede
tags: fact, peer-review, proof, religion, science, theory
2 likes
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“Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art
before the world, insists upon its importance. ”
― Henry James
tags: art, education, theory
2 likes
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“What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is
more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.”
― Murray Gell-Mann
tags: aesthetics, beauty, physics, science, theory
2 likes
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“One of the bigger mistakes of our time, I suppose, was preaching the demonization of all judgment without
teaching how to judge righteously. We now live in an age where, apart from the inability to bear even good
judgment when it so passes by, still everyone, inevitably, has a viral opinion (judgment) about everything
and everyone, but little skill in good judgment as its verification or harness.”
― Criss Jami
tags: accountability, apologetics, common-sense, control, criticism, deceit, demonization, discernment, gossip,harness, harness-your-power, hone
sty, hypocrisy, judging, judgment, libel, lies, love, mistakes, opinions, preaching,prejudgment, propaganda, righteous-judgment, righteousness, se
nse, sincerity, skill, slander, teaching, theory,understanding, verification, viral, viral-ideas
2 likes
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“[F]or a social theorist ignorance is more excusable than vagueness. Other investigators can easily show I
am wrong if I am sufficiently precise. They will have much more difficulty showing by investigation what,
precisely, I mean if I am vague. I hope not to be forced to weasel out with 'But I didn’t really mean that.'
Social theorists should prefer to be wrong rather than misunderstood. Being misunderstood shows sloppy
theoretical work.”
― Arthur L. Stinchcombe
tags: clarity, social-science, theory, vagueness
1 likes
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“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”
― Immanuel Kant
tags: experience, theory
1 likes
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“I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and
even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn.
Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts
and the foundations while they’re learning the mechanics of the application of the theory.”
― C.A.R. Hoare
tags: application, concepts, learning, theory
1 likes
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“That's the secret - to distract the senses. Have I told you my theory about them? I think that our sight,
smell, taste, touch, hearing are all calibrated for the enjoyment of a perfect world. But since the world is
imperfect, we must put blinders on the senses.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
tags: india, senses, theory
1 likes
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“I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth
by taking it a step further.”
― Criss Jami
tags: absurd, absurdity, agnosticism, apologetics, art, artist, atheism, belief, bizarre, clever, crazy, creativity,enjoyment, faith, fun, funny, funny-but-
true, god, honesty, hope, humility, humor, insane, lyrics, opinion, outrageous,outstanding, philosophy, poetry, respect, sane, science, serious, silly
, songwriting, spoken-word, talking, theism,theology, theory, trust, truth, wild, witty, words, writing
1 likes
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“La teoría intimida. Una de las características más descorazonadoras de la teoría actual es que no tiene fin.
No es algo que se pueda llegar a dominar, no es un grupo cerrado de textos que se puedan aprender para
"saber teoría". Es un muestrario inconexo de escritos que crece sin cesar, pues tanto los recién llegados
como los veteranos critican las directrices anteriores defendiendo las contribuciones teóricas de nuevos
autores o redescubriendo autores anteriores que en su momento habían quedado al margen. En este
escenario intimidador, el protagonismo pasa sin cesar a mano de nuevos autores: "¿Cómo? ¡No has leído a
Lacan! ¿Y cómo pretendes hablar de poesía sin tener en cuenta el estadio del espejo en la constitución del
sujeto?", o bien, "¿Cómo puedes escribir sobre la novela victoriana sin recurrir a la explicación foucaultiana
del despliegue de la sexualidad y la histerización del cuerpo de la mujer sin olvidar la demostración que
hizo Gayatri Spivak de cómo afecta el colonialismo a la construcción del sujeto de la metrópolis?".
Actualmente, la teoría es como una sentencia diabólica que condena a leer obras difíciles de campos no
familiares, en la que el completar una tarea no supone un respiro sino una nueva asignatura pendiente:
"¿Spivak? Claro, pero... ¿has leído la crítica que le hizo Benita Parry, y la respuesta posterior de Spivak?"
La imposibilidad de dominarla es una de las causas más importantes de la resistencia a la teoría. No
importa cuánto creas saber; nunca sabrás con certeza si "tienes que leer" a Jean Baudrillard, Mijail Bajtin,
Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, C. L. R. James, Melanie Klein o Julia Kristeva o bien si puedes olvidarlos
"sin peligro". (Dependerá, claro, de quién seas tú y de quién quieras ser.) Gran parte de la hostilidad contra
la teoría proviene sin duda de que admitir su importancia es comprometerse sin término límite a quedar en
una posición en la que siempre habrá cosas importantes que no sepamos. Pero eso es señal de que
estamos vivos.”
― Jonathan Culler
tags: theory
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“Die Kunst des Rezensierens besteht nicht zuletzt darin, selbst über langweilige Bücher fesselnd zu
schreiben.”
― Thomas Anz, Literaturkritik. Geschichte – Theorie – Praxis
tags: literary-criticism, theory
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“Every theoretical explanation is a reduction of intuition.”

― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow
tags: intuition, science, theory
0 likes
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“Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”

― Niels Bohr
tags: crazy, science, theory
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“Theoretically speaking a good reader should also be a good learner, whatever the century and the place!”
― Carl William Brown, Aforismi geniali di William Shakespeare.
tags: carl-william-brown, learner, reader, shakespeare, speaking, theory, writers
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“Nothing is more practical than a good theory.”
― Kurt Lewin
tags: practice, theory
0 likes
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“In the life cycle of a theory, it starts off simple and then gets fancier and fancier, as brainy thinkers mount
objections and the theory's proponents develop more subtle, complex, and well-defended theory to stave
them off. Then it dies. Actually, before it dies, it lives in a special preserve for theories too complicated to
survive in the wild, called a university.”
― Eric Kaplan, Does Santa Exist?: A Philosophical Investigation
tags: theory
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“There is the potential for a particle of matter to be located where we expect it to be or to be located
anywhere in the physical world. So it is with our lives – our very next moment can occur along the most
probable path or it can occur on a path entirely discontinuous with the expectations that others have for us,
but more likely in line with the expectations that we have for ourselves.”
― Kevin Michel, Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams
tags: achieve-your-dreams, evolution, faith, god, many-worlds, many-worlds-interpretation, mathematics,mechanism, metaphysics, quantum-
physics, success, theory
0 likes
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“His entire presence was like gravity, impossible to forget, possible to believe in, a theory merged into a
law.”
― Shannon A. Thompson, Death Before Daylight
tags: desire, fate, gravity, guy-quotes, hate, him, impossible, law, love, presence, science, theory, young-adult
0 likes
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“Admit only your victories until you have hooked their interest, then you draw them closer and admit the sort
of failings that reflect well on a fellow, sentimental failings: that was the theory of courtship the young master
had formulated...”
― Claire Robertson, The Spiral House
tags: courtship, theory
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“Theory-the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees”

― Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985
tags: feminism, theory
0 likes
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“In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious.”
― George Lakoff
tags: cognitive-unconscious, limits-of-thought, metaphor, philosophy, theory
0 likes
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“Theories look great on paper until reality scribbles all over the page.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich
tags: proving-theories, reality, richelle, richelle-e-goodrich, richelle-goodrich, theories, theory, theory-vs-reality
0 likes
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“The voices of actual communities are alive in a way no theory could every be even if, for now, it takes the
form of tiny acts of resistance. Who doesn't cheat on taxes, avoid cops, or skip class? These acts
themselves may not be revolutionary, but they begin to unravel the control from above. Anarchist
approaches must be relevant to everyday experiences and flexible enough to address struggles in different
situations and contexts. If we can achieve this, then we may thrive in the world after the dinosaurs. We
might even be fortunate enough to be in one of the communities that have a hand in toppling them.”
― Curious George Brigade
tags: anarchism, anarchy, cops, crimethinc, dinosaurs, resistance, revolution, taxes, theory
0 likes
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“... every hypothesis is a construction, and because of this it is an authentic theory. In so far as they merit
that exigent name, ideas are never a mere reception of presumed realities, but they are constructions of
possibilities; therefore they are pure bits of imagination, or fine ideas of our own...”
― José Ortega y Gasset
tags: construction, hypothesis, ideas, imagination, reality, theory
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“The desired shape your dreams take is directly proportional to the practical presentation of the theoretical
skills that you have learnt.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Shaping the dream
tags: act, action, actions, be-responsible, big-dreams, desire, direct, directly, do-it-yourself, dream-big, dreams, food-for-thought, israelmore-
ayivor, practical, presentation, proportion, proportional, responsibilty, responsible, take-actions, theoretical, theory
0 likes
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“...[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be
drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are
constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that
philosophical framework.”
― George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
tags: embodied-mind, embodied-realism, metaphor, philosophy, reason, theory, thought
0 likes
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“one will not break through to the enemy with theory. Directness is most important, when in front of the lion’s
den…”
― Rati Tsiteladze
tags: directness, enemy, lion, lions-den, theory
15 likes
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“His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to
get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings,
knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a
veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's
instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual
accomplishments is little short of a miracle.”
― Nikola Tesla
tags: accomplishments, american, calculation, edison, inefficiency, instinct, inventor, knowledge, method, miracle,theory, thomas-edison
12 likes
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“It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
tags: american, american-psycho, conclusion, crime, cruel, demons, epiphany, evil, gore, horror, human-beings,human-nature, humanity, humans,
life, living, murder, murderer, murderers, psycho, psychopath, quote, serial-killer, serial-killers, society, the-world, theory
11 likes
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“If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most
likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until
he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent
of his labor.”
― Nikola Tesla
tags: calculation, diligence, edison, examine, labor, reason, search, theory, thomas-edison
8 likes
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“Theories might inspire you, but experiments will advance you.”

― Amit Kalantri
tags: action, actions, advance, advancement, elevate, experiment, experiments, human, humans, inspiration,inspirational, inspirational-quotes, mo
tivation, motivational, motivational-quotes, philosophy, progress, success,taking-action, theoretical, theories, theory, wisdom, wisdom-quotes
5 likes
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“Night had fallen, and Diane admired the deep sky behind Steve's calm countenance. They looked into each
other's eyes again and felt the spark and excitement of discovery. As if to celebrate the perfect, life-enabling
distance of the earth from the sun, Diane and Steve kissed again."
"-The Grand Unified Story (a Short Story) from Stories and Scripts: an Anthology”
― Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
tags: cosmos, falling-in-love, fate, romance, science, theory
4 likes
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“All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is
based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the
primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that
every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the
guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not
retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them.”
― Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy
tags: bacon, facts, francis-bacon, guidance, knowledge, observed-facts, perception, philosophy, positivism, science,theory
2 likes
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“My action is my prayer.”
― Amit Kalantri
tags: act, action, human, humans, inspiration, inspirational, inspirational-quotes, motivation, motivational,motivational-quotes, philosophy, source,
sources, sources-of-inspiration, taking-action, theory, wisdom, wisdom-quotes
2 likes
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“Do you think things always have an explanation?

"Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand
the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation
doesn't exist.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
tags: human-limitations, theory, understanding
2 likes
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“The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct
which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In
place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all
competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows... It repudiates
the gladiatorial theory of existence... Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic
process.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics: And Other Essays
tags: biology, cosmic, ethics, evolution, evolution-of-morality, evolution-of-morals, existence, gladiatorial, goodness,respect, restraint, ruthless, sci
ence, selfishness, struggle, success, theory, virtue
2 likes
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“Chomsky's writings are 'classics' in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and
nobody wants to read.”
― Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
tags: chomsky, linguistics, theory
2 likes
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“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is ... If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.”
― Richard P. Feynman
tags: experiment, science, theory
2 likes
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“Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was
emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy - and it was.
But the way it was done led to tragedy, turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning.
And then in 1877 for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and
trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.”
― Shelby Foote
tags: american-history, american-society, civil-war-narrative, education, educational-inequity, emancipation,modernity, neglect, poverty-inequality,
racism, slavery, slaves, socialism, theory, theory-vs-practice, time-interview
2 likes
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“As every circumstance relating to so capital a discovery as this (the greatest, perhaps, that has been made
in the whole compass of philosophy, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton) cannot but give pleasure to all my
readers, I shall endeavour to gratify them with the communication of a few particulars which I have from the
best authority. The Doctor, after having published his method of verifying his hypothesis concerning the
sameness of electricity with the matter lightning, was waiting for the erection of a spire in Philadelphia to
carry his views into execution; not imagining that a pointed rod, of a moderate height, could answer the
purpose; when it occurred to him, that, by means of a common kite, he could have a readier and better
access to the regions of thunder than by any spire whatever. Preparing, therefore, a large silk handkerchief,
and two cross sticks, of a proper length, on which to extend it, he took the opportunity of the first
approaching thunder storm to take a walk into a field, in which there was a shed convenient for his purpose.
But dreading the ridicule which too commonly attends unsuccessful attempts in science, he communicated
his intended experiment to no body but his son, who assisted him in raising the kite.
The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified.
One very promising cloud passed over it without any effect; when, at length, just as he was beginning to
despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to
avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising
appearance, he immediately presented his knuckle to the key, and (let the reader judge of the exquisite
pleasure he must have felt at that moment) the discovery was complete. He perceived a very evident
electric spark. Others succeeded, even before the string was wet, so as to put the matter past all dispute,
and when the rain had wetted the string, he collected electric fire very copiously. This happened in June
1752, a month after the electricians in France had verified the same theory, but before he had heard of any
thing that they had done.”
― Joseph Priestley
tags: benjamin-franklin, discovery, electricity, experiment, france, franklin, isaac-newton, newton, philosophy,science, theory
1 likes
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“The fact that Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment, is nowhere better
illustrated than in the two fields for slight contributions to which you have done me the great honour of
awarding the the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1923. Sometimes it is one foot that is put forward first,
sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both—by theorizing and then
testing, or by finding new relations in the process of experimenting and then bringing the theoretical foot up
and pushing it on beyond, and so on in unending alterations.”
― Robert Andrews Millikan
tags: alfred-nobel, experiment, nobel, nobel-laureate, nobel-prize, physics, progress, science, theory
1 likes
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“His Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which
could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was,
to weigh, number and measure as many of those objects as his allotted three-score years and ten would
permit. This conviction biased all his doings, alike his great scientific enterprises, and the petty details of his
daily life.”
― George Wilson, The Life Of The Honorable Henry Cavendish
tags: cavendish, conviction, enterprise, henry-cavendish, measure, science, theory, universe
1 likes
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“In chemistry, our theories are crutches; to show that they are valid, they must be used to walk... A theory
established with the help of twenty facts must explain thirty, and lead to the discovery of ten more.”
― Jean-Baptiste Dumas
tags: chemistry, crutches, discovery, explanation, facts, science, scientific-theory, theory
1 likes
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“From the dawn of civilization, human beings have tried to find out order in the chaotic world surrounding
them. It has however never been easy to find a solution to explain a given system while being a part of that
system. The best bet is to find out the most fundamental components within the system and building a
theory round these. In other words, a theory that is able to describe the world in totality has to keep the
number of basic postulates it depends upon to zero or near zero.”
― Subhajit Ganguly, Abstraction In Theory - Laws Of Physical Transaction
tags: abstraction, boson, laws, physical, postulation, scale, theory, transaction, zero
1 likes
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“I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever.
The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just
crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could
destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out
there, then you needed to know what they never told you.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
tags: campus, hide, real-world, reality, reality-of-life, theory
1 likes
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“The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life”

― Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
tags: pleasures-of-life, theory
1 likes
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“A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained,
however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.”
― David Brewster
tags: doctrines, dogma, religion, science, science-and-religion, scientific-theory, theory, truth
1 likes
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“Well,' said Hawksmoor. 'It's a theory and a theory can do no harm.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
tags: rationality, science, theory
0 likes
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“Padauža išsyk atkreipė ginklą į mane. Vargšelis visas tirtėjo, prakaitas liejosi kaip iš kibiro, todėl labai jau
išmintingai nutariau, kad pistoletas neužtaisytas ir man tik reikia jį atimti. Pirmoji kulka pataikė į pilvą ir
ištaškė į skutus visą mano teoriją.”
― R.D. Wingfield, Frost At Christmas
tags: bullet, courage, gun, naivety, theory
0 likes
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“The principle of conservation of boson number inside a system is seen to follow directly from the
Abstraction Model. The IBMs are seen to obey the Laws of Physical Transaction that follows from Zero-
Postulation. The chaotic superfields at the requisite scaling-ratio yields necessary equation-parameters
needed to describe them at that given scaling-ratio. This is seen to be independent of the choice of scale,
but at smaller scaling-ratios, we have less loss of information. At a higher scale, we seem to have less
number of parameters required to describe them.”
― Subhajit Ganguly, Abstraction In Theory - Laws Of Physical Transaction
tags: abstraction, boson, laws, physical, postulation, scale, theory, transaction, zero
0 likes
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“People ignore facts which contradict the theory in the mind of the investor. Dis-confirming evidence must
be seeked out to beat this theory.”
― Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
tags: financial-markets, invest, investment, investments, planning, theory
0 likes
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“The double consequence of artifice--to project sentience out onto the made world and in turn to make
sentience itself into a complex living artifact--is thus fractured, neatly fractured, into two separable
consequences, one of which (projection) belongs to one group of people, and the other of which
(reciprocation) belongs to another group of people, and this shattering of the original integrity of projection-
reciprocation into a double location has its most sustained registration in the texture of analysis that
alternates between an almost sensuous rendering of the inner desire and movements of capital (the large
Artifact) on the one hand and an almost arithmetic recording of amplified human embodinedness on the
other. Though the interior value of capital is projected there through the collective labor of the workers, it
now (by becoming internally self-referential, and when once more externally referential, referring to a much
smaller group of people whom it now disembodies and exempts from the process of production) standas
apart from and against its own inventors.”
― Elaine Scarry The Body in Pain
tags: capitalism, literary-criticism, materialism, pain, theory
0 likes
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“Comics ... are sometimes four-legged and sometimes two-legged and sometimes fly and sometimes
don't ... to employ a metaphor as mixed as the medium itself, defining comics entails cutting a Gordian-
knotted enigma wrapped in a mystery ...”
― Robert C. Harvey
tags: comics, studies, theory
0 likes
like
“When you consider time and change, you realize that a people does not originate when individuals merge
into a bigger thing. Instead, a people arises when many actions and movements combine into novel
patterns of change. For a people is always in the making or unmaking.”
― Paulina Ochoa Espejo, The Time of Popular Sovereignty: Process and the Democratic State
tags: democracy, philosophy, theory
0 likes
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“Abstraction automatically gives rise to optimized solutions within the universal set of all possible solutions,
as has been shown in this book. It is these optimized solutions that make up and drive the non-abstract
parts of the world, while the non-optimized solutions remain ‘hidden’ from the material world, inside the
abstract world.
Starting from a basis of no postulation, we build our theory. As we go on piling up possibilities, we come to a
similar basis for understanding the four non-contact forces of nature known till date. The difference in
ranges of these forces is explained from this basis in this book. Zero postulation or abstraction as the basis
of theory synthesis allows us to explore even imaginary and chaotic non-favoured solutions as possibilities.
With no postulation as the fundamental basis, we are thus able to pile up postulated results or favoured
results, but not the other way round. We keep describing such implications of abstraction in this book. We
deal with the abstraction of observable parameters involved in a given system”
― Subhajit Ganguly
tags: abstraction, boson, dark, energy, favored, force, laws, matter, physical, postulation, scale, theory, transaction, zero
0 likes
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“Theory is like a book.

It's full of meaningless words, a few want to read it and where stays the movie.”
― Tim Goossens
tags: book, books, movie, theory
0 likes
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“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
tags: contradiction, experiment, experiments, hypothesis, jack-goldenberg, prove, result, results, theories, theory
24 likes
like
“Imagination is the other end of Reality.”

― K. Hari Kumar
tags: dreamer, dreams, imagination, inspiration, k-hari-kumar, motivation, philosophy, practical, reality, theory
11 likes
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“The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in
every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were
proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is
wrong.
The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had
proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said Socrates, 'it is because I alone know
that I know nothing.' The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew
a great deal.
Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my correspondents would
realize this.) This particular theme was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who
specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time.
My answer to him was, 'John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just
as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong
tags: ancient-greece, earth, flat-earth, greece, ignorance, knowledge, relativity, science, scientific-theory, socrates,theory, understanding, univers
e, wisdom, wrong
4 likes
like
“As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages
occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings
Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.”
― Michael Shermer
tags: biology, creationists, evolution, facts, farce, g-w-hegel, hegel, history, intelligent-design, john-scopes, john-t-scopes, karl-marx, marx, philoso
phy, pseudoscience, religion-and-science, science, scopes-monkey-trial, scopes-trial, superstition, theory, tragedy
3 likes
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“Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned—the question to nature must be formulated
before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted—nature's
answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of the theorist, who finds himself always
more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics. Of course, this does not mean that the
experimenter does not also engage in theoretical deliberations. The foremost classical example of a major
achievement produced by such a division of labor is the creation of spectrum analysis by the joint efforts
of Robert Bunsen, the experimenter, and Gustav Kirchhoff, the theorist. Since then, spectrum analysis has
been continually developing and bearing ever richer fruit.”
― Max Planck
tags: analysis, bunsen, experiment, gustav-kirchhoff, kirchhoff, math, mathematics, nature, robert-bunsen, science,spectrum, theory
2 likes
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“I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art.
This is best seen in the theoretical aspects of Physical Science. The mathematical theorist builds up on
certain assumptions and according to well understood logical rules, step by step, a stately edifice, while his
imaginative power brings out clearly the hidden relations between its parts. A well constructed theory is in
some respects undoubtedly an artistic production. A fine example is the famous Kinetic Theory of
Maxwell. ... The theory of relativity by Einstein, quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be
regarded as a magnificent work of art.”
― Ernest Rutherford
tags: albert-einstein, art, discovery, einstein, james-clerk-maxwell, james-maxwell, kinetic-theory, logic, magnificent,math, mathematics, maxwell,
science, scientific-theory, theory, theory-of-relativity
2 likes
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“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
tags: evidence, explainability, imagination, pseudoscience, rationalization, rigor, science, scrutiny, theory
2 likes
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“God created… light and
dark, heaven and hell—
science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created
everything in the universe with an opposite.
“Including matter itself, antimatter”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
tags: antimatter, big-bang, claims, dark, everything, heaven, hell, light, matter, opposite, opposites, religion, science,the-big-bang, theories, theory,
theory-of-everything
2 likes
like
“Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most
elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it
is.”
― Eric Temple Bell
tags: henri-poincaré, logic, math, mathematics, poincaré, science, theory, vigorous
2 likes
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“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
tags: accepted, andrew-wakefield, anti-vaccine, exonerated, proven, theory, vaccine-autism-connection
2 likes
like
“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
tags: biology, charles-darwin, citizenship, crimean-war, darwin, evolution, popularity, russia, science, scientific-theory, sympathy, theory, theory-of-
evolution, western-europe
2 likes
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“I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, for a multitude of
such theorems can easily be set up, which one could neither prove nor disprove. But I have been stimulated
by it to bring our again several old ideas for a great extension of the theory of numbers. Of course, this
theory belongs to the things where one cannot predict to what extent one will succeed in reaching obscurely
hovering distant goals. A happy star must also rule, and my situation and so manifold distracting affairs of
course do not permit me to pursue such meditations as in the happy years 1796-1798 when I created the
principal topics of my Disquisitiones arithmeticae. But I am convinced that if good fortune should do more
than I expect, and make me successful in some advances in that theory, even the Fermat theorem will
appear in it only as one of the least interesting corollaries.
{In reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. The hope Gauss expressed
for his success was never realised.}”
― Carl Friedrich Gauss
tags: fermat, fermat-s-theorem, goals, heinrich-wilhelm-matthias-olbers, math, mathematics, olbers, pierre-de-fermat, science, theory
1 likes
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“You have gone through enough theory, now it's time to take actions.”
― Amit Kalantri
tags: act, action, human, humans, inspiration, inspirational, inspirational-quotes, motivation, motivational,motivational-quotes, philosophy, source,
sources, sources-of-inspiration, taking-action, theory, wisdom, wisdom-quotes
1 likes
like
“the Z-particle Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be the

smallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.”
tags: building-block, building-blocks, energy, mass, matter, nature, particle, particles, pure-energy, science, small,smallest, theories, theory, trap, t
rapped, traps, z
1 likes
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“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
tags: chemistry, discovery, french, invention, oxygen-theory, posterity, science, scientific-theory, scientist, theory
1 likes
like
“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
tags: discovery, electrical-engineer, electricity, invention, light, science, scientific-theory, telephone, theory
1 likes
like
“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
tags: argument-from-design-debunked, atheism, atheist-arguments, coherence, fine-tuning-debunked, god-of-theism, hypothesis, philosophy, prob
ability, problem-of-evil, reason, theory, values
1 likes
like
“… Fourier's great mathematical poem ...
{Referring to Joseph Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat, one of the precursors to
thermodynamics.}”
― William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Treatise On Natural Philosophy
tags: fourier, heat, jean-baptiste-joseph-fourier, joseph-fourier, math, mathematics, poem, poetry, science, theory
1 likes
like
“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
tags: theory
1 likes
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“The great object is to find the theory of the matter [of X-rays] before anyone else, for nearly every professor
in Europe is now on the warpath.”
― Ernest Rutherford
tags: europe, physics, professor, röntgen, science, theory, wilhelm-conrad-röntgen, wilhelm-röntgen, x-rays
1 likes
like
“Energetically speaking, antimatter is the mirror image of matter, so the two instantly cancel each other out if
they come in contact.
Keeping antimatter isolated from matter is a challenge, of course, because everything on earth is made of
matter. The samples have to be stored without ever touching anything at all—even air.”
tags: air, antimatter, atmosphere, cancel-each-other-out, cancel-out, challenge, challenges, contact, energy, image,instant, instantly, isolated, isol
ation, matter, mirror-image, opposite, opposites, samples, science, theories, theory,touch, touching
1 likes
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“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
tags: achieve-your-dreams, evolution, faith, god, many-worlds, many-worlds-interpretation, mathematics,mechanism, metaphysics, quantum-
physics, success, theory
1 likes
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“Gut?”
“General Unified Theory.” Kohler quipped. “The theory of everything.”
tags: everything, g-u-t, general-unified-theory, gut, quip, quipping, theories, theory, theory-of-everything
1 likes
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“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...
tags: atomic-theory, atoms, brownian, chemistry, evidence, hypothesis, j-j-thomson, j-perrin, justification, matter,nature, proof, scientific-theory, the
ory
1 likes
like
“To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way
to gain knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov
tags: ancient-greeks, antiquity, greek-philosophers, greeks, knowledge, perfect, philosophers, test, theory, valid
0 likes
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“Philo of Larisa, head of the Academy in Athens....inspired Cicero with a passion for philosophy, and in
particular for the theories of Skepticism, which asserted that knowledge of the nature of things is in the
nature of things unattainable. Such ideas were well judged to appeal to a student of rhetoric who had
learned to argue all sides of a case. In his early twenties Cicero wrote the first two volumes of a work on
'inventin'--that is to say, the technique of finding ideas and arguments for a speech; in it he noted that the
most important thing was 'that we do not recklessly and presumptuously assume something to be true.' This
resolute uncertainty was to be a permanent feature of his thought.”
― Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
tags: cicero, methodology, methods, philosophy, skepticism, theory, uncertainty
0 likes
like
“Nonetheless, it remains the case that the psychological literature on organised abuse has not provided a
coherent explanation for the emergence of sexually abusive groups in a range of contexts, or for the
difficulties that victims experience in disclosing their abuse and accessing care and support. The
psychological model of organised abuse emphasises individual rather than social factors and so it tends to
characterise organised abuse as a drama of psychological energies.
Similar deficiencies can be found in attempts to theorise organised abuse that draw from psychiatric
understandings of ‘paedophilia’ (eg Wyre 1996). This is a perspective that has proved particularly influential
in public inquiries into allegations of organised abuse (for examples from Australia, see NCA Joint
Committee Report 1995, Wood Report 1997, for examples from Britain, see Corby et at. 2001). These
public inquiries have integrated the psychiatric notion of ‘paedophilia’ with existing stereotypes of organised
crime to generate a model of ‘organised paedophilia’ or the ‘paedophile ring’, in which otherwise solitary
sexual offenders with deviant sexual interests conspire to sexually abuse children for pleasure and/or profit.
This psychiatric model may accurately describe some abusive men and groups but it has proven
problematic as a catch-all explanation for organised abuse. Attempts to establish the existence of
‘paedophile rings’ often founders on semantic debates over whether alleged perpetrators meet the
diagnostic criteria of a ‘paedophile’, sometimes leading to the confused and misleading conclusion that no
‘paedophile ring’ existed even where there is strong evidence that multiple perpetrators have colluded in the
sexual abuse of multiple children.”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse
tags: definition, organized-abuse, paedophilia, pedophile-rings, pedophilia, psychiatry, research, ritual-abuse, sex-rings, sexual-abuse, theory
0 likes
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“Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the
world.”
― Denis Diderot
tags: egg, proof, temple, theory, topple, world
0 likes
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“Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and
useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical
formulation of physical laws.”
― Tsung-Dao Lee
tags: beginning, china, chinese, laws-of-nature, nobel-laureate, physics, power, science, symmetry, theory
0 likes
like
“If there are infinite dimensions then there would be infinite alternate realities and if there are infinite
alternate realities we would exist in almost all of them that would make all of us omnipresent...”
― Stanley Victor Paskavich
tags: after-life, belief, energy, omnipresent, reality, religion, science, spirituality, stantasyland, theory, universe
0 likes
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“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
tags: education, learning, practice, revolutionary, theory
44 likes
like
“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with
experiment, it's wrong.”
― Richard P. Feynman
tags: experimentation, science, theory
37 likes
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“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
tags: social-sciences, theory
9 likes
like
“ ‫ بعد السعي‬، ‫ "الوصول ألي هدف‬:‫ "من أكثر تعريفات النجاح إقناعا ً من وجهة نظري هو‬:‫أكمل الدكتور حكيم كالمه فقال‬
‫ "إليه‬..
‫إن هذا التعريف يلقي الضوء على أهم عناصر النجاح‬:
‫ السعي نحو الهدف‬، ً‫ أوال‬..
‫ الوصول إليه و تحقيقه‬:ً ‫ثانيا‬.”
― ‫ شارع النجاح‬4 ,‫إيهاب فكري‬
tags: theory, ‫التوازن‬-‫ نظرية‬,‫ نجاح‬,‫ مجهود‬,‫ عمل‬,‫شخصي‬-‫ تخطيط‬,‫تخطيط‬
8 likes
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“Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.”

― Émile Durkheim
tags: crime, society, theory
6 likes
like
“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 Guth
tags: science, theory, truth
6 likes
like
“Theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing.”
― Jean-Martin Charcot
tags: theory
4 likes
like
“Reward theory. Some people just aren't worth your tears.”

― Janelle Carreon
tags: life, tears, theory
3 likes
like
“[Chemist Michael] Polanyi found one other necessary requirement for full initiation into science: Belief. If
science has become the orthodoxy of the West, individuals are nevertheless still free to take it or leave it, in
whole or in part; believers in astrology, Marxism and virgin birth abound. But "no one can become a scientist
unless he presumes that the scientific doctrine and method are fundamentally sound and that their ultimate
premises can be unquestionably accepted.”
― Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
tags: richard-rhodes, science, the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb, theory
2 likes
like
“If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.”

― James Richardson, Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays
tags: theory, wisdom
2 likes
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“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
tags: laws-of-nature, science, skepticism, theory
2 likes
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“A new theory doesn't change the way things actually happen.”

― Marty Rubin
tags: events, reality, theory
1 likes
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“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
tags: theory
1 likes
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“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.”
― J. David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
tags: data, hypothesis, science, theory
1 likes
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“Más realidades hay en la experiencia que en la mejor de las teorías.”

― Fernando Araya
tags: experience, reality, theory
1 likes
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“Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their
historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified
and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick.”
― Erving Polster, Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory & Practice
tags: action, knowledge, theory
0 likes
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Difference Between Theory and Practice

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Difference Between Theory And Practice

"The DifferenceBetweenTheoryAndPractice is in theory somewhat smaller than in practice"

ISBN 0738201669 Collection of Lectures

"Reality wins. Always. That's science."

Some miscellaneous thoughts on theory and reality.

 The purpose of theory is to predict future observations.

[Columbian Magazine interview]”

“Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.”

DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?

DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...

BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!

“Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'

'There was Manicheanism...'

Snow pondered for a while:

'If you're going to take what I say literally...'

...Snow asked abruptly:

'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

“An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.”

"Oh, no," said Father Brown.

“It is the theory which decides what can be observed”

Quotes tagged as "theory" (showing 61-90 of 166)

“Proof' is the hallmark of religion.”

“Every theoretical explanation is a reduction of intuition.”

“Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”

“Theory-the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees”

Quotes tagged as "theory" (showing 91-120 of 166)

“Theories might inspire you, but experiments will advance you.”

“Do you think things always have an explanation?

“The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life”

“Theory is like a book.

Quotes tagged as "theory" (showing 121-150 of 166)

“Imagination is the other end of Reality.”

“the Z-particle Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be the

“… Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

Quotes tagged as "theory" (showing 151-166 of 166)

“Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.”

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

“If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.”

“A new theory doesn't change the way things actually happen.”

“Theory shows a way to a goal, but it is not the goal.

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

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