Theory Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

[The theory of the firm] is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility'.

Kenneth Boulding

The field of 'information theory' began by using the old hardware paradigm of transportation of data from point to point.

Marshall McLuhan

A theoretical investigation which Einstein published in 1917 provides a third conspicuous landmark. It connected up he two great landmarks already mentioned by showing that the disintegration of radioactive substances is governed by the same laws as the jumps of the kangaroo electrons in the theory of Bohr. In fact radioactive atoms were now seen merely to contain a special breed of kangaroos, much more energetic and ferocious than any that had hitherto been encountered.

I have a theory about why opposites attract. I think it's because we have a deep desire to get on each other's nerves.

Patsy Clairmont

Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work.

Richard Dawkins

When love is a theory, it's safe, it's free of risk. But love in the brain changes nothing.

Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all the social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering.

William Hurrell Mallock

I'll give you a theory: Man's closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog.

In 1925 Heisenberg made a new attempt, on entirely novel lines, to obtain an explanation of atomic spectra. Working in collaboration with Bohr, he had come to the conclusion that the imperfections of Bohr's theory had been a consequence of assuming too simple a model for the atom. For Bohr had not only assumed that the atom consisted of particles moving through space and time, but also that the particles inside atoms were of the same kind as the electrons outside atoms.

—Then there is the final possibility, my favorite.
—Yes?
—The final possibility is that I'm God.
—You're God?
—Just a theory, but the data are provocative. I mean, look at me. Faceless, shapeless, holey, undifferentiated, Jewish, inscrutable... and a hermaphrodite to boot. Years ago, I told you sponges cannot be fatally dismembered, for each part quickly becomes the whole. To wit, I am both immortal and infinite.
—You're God? You're God herself? You?
—The data are provocative.
—God is a sponge? A sponge? There's not much comfort in that.
—Agreed.
—Sponges can't help us.
—Neither can God, as far as I can tell. I'd be happy to see some contrary data.

James K. Morrow

Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.

The inner connection between a positivism of numbers and quantities and one of human values and qualities is the excision of a critical distance and theory. Both surrender to different faces of reality—its facts or its ideology—and both stay clear and clean of antagonisms and contradictions.

Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Communist interpretation is never wrong. Logicians will object in vain that a theory which exempts itself from all refutations escapes from the order of truth.

When half my friends were getting slapped upside the head by their parents — 'Better do what your dad did and your grandfather, if the mill was good enough or the mine was good enough for them, then that's what you do' — my mother and father never allowed me to fall for that gold watch theory.

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words.

Alfred de Vigny

Theory consists in referring particular operations to the principles, or general laws, under which they are comprehended; or in referring particular effects to the causes from which they proceed.

Previous to the time of Pascal, who would have thought of measuring doubt and belief? Who could have conceived that the investigation of petty games of chance would have led to the most sublime branch of mathematical science - the theory of probabilities?

William Stanley Jevons

In teaching, the other main problem related to type is the students' interest. Intuitives and sensing types differ greatly in what they find interesting in any subject even if they like, that is, are interested in, the same subjects. Intuitives like the principle, the theory, the why. Sensing types like the practical application, the what and the how.

Isabel Briggs Myers

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

Theory confronts experiment, and both sides are a mixture of obscurity and clarity.

Lancelot Law Whyte

The meaning that I have given to the word administration and which has been generally adopted, broadens considerably the field of administrative science. It embraces not only the public service but enterprises of every size and description, of every form and every purpose. All undertakings require planning, organization, command, co-ordination and control, and in order to function properly, all must observe the same general principles. We are no longer confronted with several administrative sciences but with one alone, which can be applied equally well to public and to private affairs and whose principal elements are today summarized in what we term the Administrative Theory.

The legal theory is, that marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband.

Game theory applies to a very different type of conflict, now technically called a game. The well-known games such as poker, chess, ticktacktoe and so forth are games in the strict technical Bark and counterbark sense. But what makes parlor games games is not their entertainment value or detachment from real life.

Anatol Rapoport