Theory Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.

Benito Mussolini

Believing that the power to destroy belongs to the Creator alone I affirm... that any theory which, when carried out, demands the annihilation of force, is necessarily erroneous.

James Prescott Joule

But the nature of my main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects.

Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.

Theoretical approaches have their place and are, I suppose, essential but a theory must be tempered with reality.

Jawaharlal Nehru

The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life - involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense.

Talcott Parsons

Growing up in Gary Indiana gave me, I think, a distinct advantage over many of my classmates who had grown up in affluent suburbs. They could read articles that argued that in competitive equilibrium, there could not be discrimination, so long as there are some non-discriminatory individuals or firms, since it would pay any such firm to hire the lower wage discriminated-against individuals, and take them seriously. I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced. To me, the theorem simply proved that one or more of the assumptions that went into the theory was wrong.

Joseph Stiglitz

The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.

Giuseppe Mazzini

The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population.

Henry Charles Carey

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

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

Every theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy that orders experience into the framework it provides.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue; it is an intellectual crime.

The rich possess ample means to realize any theory they may chuse to adopt in the education of their children, regardless of the cost; but it is not so with him whose Subsistence is derived from industry.

Joseph Lancaster

He was, however, speaking to a representative of government, the police. And it is to government that one goes 'for a redress of grievances,' to use an almost forgotten phrase of the First Amendment. But it is said that the purpose was 'to cause inconvenience and annoyance.' Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.

William O. Douglas

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong.

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

No one must think that Newton's great creation can be overthrown in any real sense by this [Theory of Relativity] or by any other theory. His clear and wide ideas will for ever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of physics have been built.

Albert Einstein

The theory of relativity does, however, force us to change fundamentally our ideas of space and time. We must accept that time is not completely separate from and independent of space, but is combined with it to form an object called space-time.

Stephen Hawking

My theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe.... we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.

Stephen Hawking

In war, theory is all right so far as general principles are concerned; but in reducing general principles to practice there will always be danger. Theory and practice are the axis about which the sphere of accomplishment revolves.

Napoleon I of France