Theorists Quotes - Page 4

• I have yet to meet the famous Rational Economic Man theorists describe. Real people have always done inexplicable things from time to time, and they show no sign of stopping.

  Charles S. Sanford, Jr.

  Real, Men, People

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• Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes called "exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

  David Foster Wallace

  Communication, Insightful, Connections

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• During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

  Akira Kurosawa

  Believe, Mean, Eye

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• Whether the ice caps melt, or expand - whatever happens - the anthropogenic global warming theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Ice, Astrology, Perfect

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• Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.

  Fredric Jameson

  Winning, Degrees, Machines

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• Most conspiracy theorists dont understand this. But if there really were a CIA plot, no documents would exist.

  Gerald Posner

  Plot, Conspiracy, Cia

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• Economic theorists, like French chefs in regard to food, have developed stylized models whose ingredients are limited by some unwritten rules. Just as traditional French cooking does not use seaweed or raw fish, so neoclassical models do not make assumptions derived from psychology, anthropology, or sociology. I disagree with any rules that limit the nature of the ingredients in economic models.

  George Akerlof

  Economic Models, Psychology, Cooking

  "An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales". Book by George Akerlof, October 26, 1984.

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• Since my first discussions of ecological problems with Professor John Day around 1950 and since reading Konrad Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring," I have become increasingly interested in the study of animals for what they might teach us about man, and the study of man as an animal. I have become increasingly disenchanted with what the thinkers of the so-called Age of Enlightenment tell us about the nature of man, and with what the formal religions and doctrinaire political theorists tell us about the same subject.

  Allan McLeod Cormack

  Kings, Reading, Science

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• The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.

  Andrey Kapitsa

  Horse, Kyoto, Atmosphere

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• Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Educational, Thinking, Play

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

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• It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Men, Often Is, Perspective

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.76, Routledge

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• It is universally appreciated, I think, that theorists are able to tweak their assumptions in order to reach any conclusion they wish. The believability of the conclusion depends not only on the fact that it was reached but on how hard the theorist had to tweak the model to get there.

  David M. Kreps

  Thinking, Order, Wish

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• Contemporary political theorists continue this type of thinking about democracy by arguing that the development of "public judgment" among regular citizens should be made the central concern of modern politics. Public judgment, in the words of Benjamin Barber, is a function of commonality that can be exercised only by citizens interacting with one another in the context of mutual deliberation and decision.

  Kevin Mattson

  Thinking, Decision, Political

  Kevin Mattson (1994). “Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era”, p.4, Penn State Press

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• The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an exorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will some day experience its "No" - most theories, soon after conception.

  Albert Einstein

  Memorable, Mean, Judging

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.45, St. Martin's Press

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• Our model of Nature should not be like a building-a handsome structure for the populace to admire, until in the course of time some one takes away a corner stone and the edifice comes toppling down. It should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion-that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Soul

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• As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.

  Michael Shermer

  Science, Intelligent, History

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• There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Enemy, Events

  "The Flying Inn". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1914.

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• Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Believe, Insomnia, Race

  FaceBook post by Jonathan Lethem from Jul 01, 2016

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• What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Believe, Years, Issues

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• The media have the ability to attract the craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, and every sort of conspiracy theorist.

  Steig Larsson

  Media, People, World

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• Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe.

  Thomas Hardy

  Believe, Eye, Looks

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Diversion Classics)”, p.131, Diversion Books

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• Let every man be his own methodologist, let every man be his own theorist

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Every Man

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.224, Oxford University Press

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• I don't buy into the dystopian scenarios of self-aware robots enslaving mankind, but you don't have to be a sci-fi conspiracy theorist to acknowledge that plenty of good, well-paying jobs are being taken over by machines.

  Marco Rubio

  Dream, Jobs, Taken

  Marco Rubio (2015). “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone”, p.19, Penguin

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• Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

  Francis Crick

  Trying, Negative, Too Much

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• It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.

  Douglass North

  Jobs, Playing Chess, Firsts

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