YourDictionary

theory quotes

  • Were Ito deduceanysystem frommy feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called TheTheory of Permanent Adolescence.

    - Cyril Vernon Connolly
      Enemies of Promise, ch.24.

  • Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      Contarini Fleming, pt.1, ch.23.

  • Grau, teurer Freund, ist alleTheorie. Und gru« n  des Lebens goldner Baum. All theory, dear friend, isgrey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

    -JohannWolfgang von Goethe
      Faust, pt.1,'Studierzimmer'.

  • An economist is someone who, when he finds something which works in practice, wonders if it will work in theory.

    -Walter Wolfgang Heller
       Attributed.

  • First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

    -William James
      Pragmatism, lecture 6.

  • Theory is a good thing but a good experiment lasts forever.

    - Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa
      Experiment, Theory, Practice.

  • Wie manches wu«  rde in derTheorie unwidersprechlich scheinen, wenn es dem Genie nicht gelungen w a« re, das Widerspiel durch dieTat zu erweisen. How many things would have appeared incontestable in theory if genius had not proved them wrong in practice. Levant

    - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
      Laokoon: an essay upon the limits of painting and poetry, pt.4.

  •    If you wanttoknow thetaste of a pear, you musttastethe pear by eating it for yourself. If you want to know the theoryand methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

    -Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung
       Address to the  Anti- Japanese Military and Political College,  Jul.

  •    ThetheoryoftheCommunistsmay be summedup inthe single sentence: Abolition of private property.

    - Karl Heinrich Marx
      The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels, translated by Samuel Moore,1888).

  • Appeals to rationality are mostly bluff. There is no good theory of what it is nor of how to recognize it.

    - D H Mellor
      'Objective Decision Making', in Social Theory and Practice, Summer^Fall.

  • Democracy isthetheory thatthe commonpeopleknow what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

    - H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
      Little Book in C Major.

  • We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

    - H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
    'Minority Report'. Collected in Notebooks (1956).

  • Happily, there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete.

    -John Stuart Mill
      Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

  • The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as the theory.

    -J(ulius) Robert Oppenheimer
      In Reflex,  Jul.

  • In order that a new theory should constitute a discovery or step forward it should conflict with its predecessor †it should contradict its predecessor; it should overthrow it. In this sense, progress in scienceor at least striking progressis always revolutionary.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

  • The belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.1.

  • It is a fatal defect of current principles of administration that, like proverbs, they occur in pairs. For almost every principle one can find an equally plausible and acceptable contradictory principle. Although the two principles of the pair will lead to exactly opposite recommendations, there is nothing in the theory to indicate which is the appropriate one to apply.

    - Herbert A Simon
      Administrative Behavior.

  • The question of how to apply social theory to historical materials, as it is usually posed, is ridiculous.One does not apply theory to history; rather one uses history to develop theory.

    - Arthur S Stinchcombe
      Theoretical Methods in Social History, p.1.

  • Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money off them.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
    The Bee (published1917).

  • The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

    - Alfred North Whitehead
      Adventures of Ideas.

  • Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloomisgone.Thewholetheoryof moderneducationis radically unsound. Fortunately, in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      Lady Bracknell.The Importance of Being Earnest, act1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about theory

link/cite print suggestion box