Best 629 quotes in «theory quotes» category

On a basic level- everything we say- essentially anything that comes out of our mouths is a rationalisation in some form or another

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.

one will not break through to the enemy with theory. Directness is most important, when in front of the lion’s den…

People ignore facts which contradict the theory in the mind of the investor. Dis-confirming evidence must be seeked out to beat this theory.

on "idea technology"--Science creates ideas, science creates ways of understanding. And in the social sciences, ways of understanding ourselves. And they have an enormous influence on how we think, what we aspire to, and how we act. ......idea technology may be the most profoundly important technology that science gives us.......we do have to worry about the theories we have of human nature, because human nature will be changed by the theories we have that are designed to explain and help us understand human beings....it is only human nature to have a human nature that is very much the product of the society in which people live. --TED The way we think about work is broken

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.

People are tired of being told that it's possible... It's time to show them how it can be possible. Leadership is demonstration.

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.

People who always arrive early aren't worth waiting for.

Perhaps the nearest one could get to a common characteristic of poststructuralism would be a radical suspicion of reason, order and certainty as governing principles of knowledge and existence...the absurd and the irrational can no longer be distinguished from the real and the rational

...[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.

Police officers are well known for their aggressive behaviors, search "Police Officer Angry Aggression Theory". I can speak from personal experience that they do cover up for each other and target individuals that they have a vendetta on. Police Internal Affairs is just an extension of the cover up machine, they uphold very few complaints.

Police Officer Angry Aggression Theory (POAAT) is why you need to video record the police before they shoot you. Always start the video camera at the first contact, as it can go sour at any time and without warning.

resistance often lacks an overt political project and frequently reflects social practices that are informal, disorganised, apolitical, and atheoretical in nature. In some instances it can reduce itself to an unreflective and defeatist refusal to acquiesce to different forms of domination; on some occasions it can be seen as a cynical, arrogant, or even naive rejection of oppressive forms of moral and political regulation

Religion, culture, education are all things that sound wonderful in theory. In practice, however, they are not so wonderful.

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

Ronald, remember our deal? Keep feeding me the children. You'll stay rich while I stay full.

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.

Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term "abduction" to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as "inference to the best explanation." It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences.

(Sartre) (The world is full without me, as in Nausea; the world plays at living behind a glass partition; the world is in an aquarium; I see everything close up and yet cut off, made of some other substance; I keep falling outside myself, without dizziness, without blue, into precision.

Say whatever, plan whatever (I really don't care), but the action and the result is the important the other is theory.

That’s it”, Crow replies pointedly. “A theory that still doesn’t have any good counter-evidence is one worth pursuing. And right now? Pursuing it’s the only choice you have. Even if it means sacrificing yourself, you have to pursue it to the bitter end.

Space is like liquid/water, but space has no friction. Water has a density. The planets have a density. The galaxies are like different vortexes and the gravitational pull is caused by the pull of the vortex. The vortex spins faster in the center and slower on the top/outside. So that's why gravitational pull is different on other planets/moons Density dictates where you fall in the galaxy/vortex and there are many vortexes throughout the universe. Theory.

Some days, theory is all that we have,” I say. “It’s better than having nothing at all.”, FADE by Kailin Gow

Stories were migrants, blow-ins, border-crossers, tunnellers from France and Italy and more distant territories where earlier and similar stories had been passed on in Arabic and Persian and Chinese and Sanskrit.

String theory makes sense to me because the universe is a symphony that creates harmony with the vibration of our strings.

Take the example of our spinner. We have seen that, to daily reproduce his labouring power, he must daily reproduce a value of three shillings, which he will do by working six hours daily. But this does not disable him from working ten or twelve or more hours a day. But by paying the daily or weekly value of the spinner's labouring power the capitalist has acquired the right of using that labouring power during the whole day or week. He will, therefore, make him work say, daily, twelve hours. Over and above the six hours required to replace his wages, or the value of his labouring power, he will, therefore, have to work six other hours, which I shall call hours of surplus labour, which surplus labour will realize itself in a surplus value and a surplus produce. If our spinner, for example, by his daily labour of six hours, added three shillings' value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equivalent to his wages, he will, in twelce hours, add six shillings' worth to the cotton, and produce a proportional surplus of yarn. As he has sold his labouring power to the capitalist, the whole value of produce created by him belongs to the capitalist, the owner pro tem. of his labouring power. By advancing three shillings, the capitalist will, therefore, realize a value of six shillings, because, advancing a value in which six hours of labour are crystallized. By repeating this same process daily, the capitalist will daily advance three shillings and daily pocket six shillings, one half of which will go to pay wages anew, and the other half of which will form surplus value, for which the capitalist pays no equivalent. It is this sort of exchange between capital and labour upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the working man as a working man, and the capitalist as a capitalist.

The amount of understanding produced by a theory is determined by how well it meets the criteria of adequacy–testability, fruitfulness, scope, simplicity, conservatism–because these criteria indicate the extent to which a theory systematizes and unifies our knowledge.

The existence of conscious minds and their access to the evident truth of ethics and methematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our place in it has yet to explain.

The broken window theory argues that minor nuisances, if left unchecked, turn into major nuisances: that is, if someone breaks a window and sees it isn’t fixed immediately, he gets the signal that it’s all right to break the rest of the windows and maybe set the building afire too.

The coppers, thinking I must be hacked to bits at the bottom of the Thames, now blame both murders on the Ripper. The theory is so ironic I cannot help but snort out a tirade of titters.

...the essential task of feminism is not to go looking around for a ready-made theory and then try to make it relevant to our (little?) "issue" or "problem". This is self-depreciating in the extreme, a fact that is obvious if one realises that feminism is cosmic in its dimensions.

The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake is an inane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions. Upon the basis of the wages system the value of labouring power is settled like that of every other commodity; and as different kinds of labouring power have different values, or require different quantities of labour for their production, they must fetch different prices in the labour market. To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production? After what has been said, it will be seen that the value of labouring power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power.

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.

The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.

The idea of a clean war, like that of a clean bomb or an intelligent missile, this whole war conceived as a technological extrapolation of the brain is a sure sign of madness. It is like those characters in Hieronymus Bosch with a glass bell or a soap bubble around their head as a sign of their mental debility. A war enclosed in a glass coffin, like Snow White, purged of any carnal contamination or warrior's passion. A clean war which ends up in an oil slick.

... theory is good for you because studying it expands your mind... Specific technical knowledge, though useful today, becomes outdated in just a few years. Consider instead the abilities to think, to express yourself clearly and precisely, to solve problems, and to know when you haven’t solved a problem. These abilities have lasting value. Studying theory trains you in these areas.

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.

Theories are based on practicals and practice helps to make theories, but these two are the opposite poles on the planet.

Theory is, of course, critical to the development of specific analyses of women’s situation. Explicitly or implicitly, empirical phenomena must be organised in terms of a theoretical construct in order to be grasped conceptually. At the same time, theory is, by its very nature, severely limited. As a structure of concepts, a theoretical framework simply provides guidance for the understanding of actual societies, past and present. However indispensable this theoretical guidance may be, specific strategies, programmes, or tactics for change cannot be deduced directly from theory. Nor can the phenomenon of variation in women’s situation over time, and in different societies, be addressed solely by means of theory. These are matters for concrete analysis and historical investigation.

Theory of all types is often presented as being so abstract that it can be appreciated only by a select few. Though often highly satisfying to academics, this definition excludes those who do not speak the language of elites and thus reinforces social relations of domination. Educated elites typically claim that only they are qualified to produce theory and believe that only they can interpret not only their own but everyone else's experiences. moreover, educated elites often use this belief to uphold their own privilege.

The older poets were Ethelbert Miller, Kenneth Carroll, Brian Gilmore. It is important that I tell you their names, that you know that I have never achieved anything alone.

Theory is relevant to you because it shows you a new, simpler, and more elegant side of computers, which we normally consider to be complicated machines. The best computer designs and applications are conceived with elegance in mind. A theoretical course can heighten your aesthetic sense and help you build more beautiful systems.

Theory is like a book. It's full of meaningless words, a few want to read it and where stays the movie.

Theoretically speaking a good reader should also be a good learner, whatever the century and the place!

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.

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.

The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....

Theories might inspire you, but experiments will advance you.

There are those who feel that the world is ultimately moving closer to Truth and to prosperity as the times evolve; then there are those who feel that it is ultimately moving farther away from Truth and into self-destruction. From this, and if it were really that simplistic, one might get the impression that life gravitates slightly into two types of people whom which are diametrically opposed in spirit.