Theory Quotes

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The Theory hardly rose to the dignity of a Working Hypothesis. Clearly more Facts were needed.

Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see where the separation between the too comes in. At least if you must put books on one side and life on the other, each is a poor and bloodless thing; but my theory is that they mix indistinguishable.

Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities- that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.

Edgar Allan Poe

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Stephen Hawking

Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon.

The characteristic of a true theory is its fruitfulness.

Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.

Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

G. K. Chesterton

We are a moderate, pragmatic people, more comfortable with practice than theory.

The primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. That's all right as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty to yourself?

Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. Far from reversing the slow relative decline of Britain vis-à-vis its main industrial competitors, it accelerated it. We fell further behind them, until by 1979 we were widely dismissed as 'the sick man of Europe'... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

Margaret Thatcher

I have no theory about dreams. I do not know how dreams arise. On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly – if we take the boat with us and turn it over and over – something almost always comes out of it.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

We see that science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.

Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time. Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. However, knowing this, one must attend to medical practice not primarily to plausible theories, but to experience combined with reason. For a theory is a composite memory of things apprehended with sense perception.

The theoretical scientist is compelled in an increasing degree to be guided by purely mathematical, formal considerations in his search for a theory, because the physical experience of the experimenter cannot lift him into the regions of highest abstraction.

Albert Einstein

The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only.

Thomas Jefferson

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Thomas Jefferson

Science, like dress, has its fashions, and the changes in the one are almost as sudden and radical as in the other. Many a time has a theory become old and given place to a newer sensation, only to be later rehabilitated after its earlier service has been forgotten.