Theory Quotes - Page 14

• There's no thinking involved in my choreography... I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body... If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Mean, Thinking

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• We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.

  Walter Lippmann

  Freedom, People, Support

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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• A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.

  Karl Mannheim

  Knowledge, Character, Historical

  "Ideology and Utopia". Book by Karl Mannheim, 1936.

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• My worthy friend, gray are all theories
  And green alone Life's golden tree.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Tree, Golden

  BookCaps, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “Faust in Plain and Simple English: First Part of the Tragedy: (A Modern Translation and the Original Version): BookCaps Study Guide”, p.163, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work inthe brewery.

  George Jean Nathan

  Marriage, Wedding, Jobs

  George Jean Nathan, Charles Angoff (1998). “The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary”, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• We must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.

  Marvin Minsky

  Music, Art, People

  "Music, Mind, and Meaning". Computer Music Journal, Vol. 5, Number 3, web.media.mit.edu. Fall 1981.

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• All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.

  Karl Marx

  Peace, Ubuntu, Practice

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• To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Determination, Believe, Eye

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• If those who had set themselves to explain the various theories of Christianity had set themselves instead to do the will of the Master, how different the world would be now!

  George MacDonald

  Religion, Different, Would Be

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• Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Religious, Religion, Cosmos

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• In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is open - ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The prospect that evolution by natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Religion, Atheism, Earth

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• I believe my theory of relativity to be true. But it will only be proved for certain in 1981, when I am dead.

  Albert Einstein

  Believe, Science, Certain

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• Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics.

  Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker

  Science, Physics, Quantum

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• A hypothesis or theory is clear, decisive, and positive, but it is believed by no one but the man who created it. Experimental findings, on the other hand, are messy, inexact things, which are believed by everyone except the man who did that work.

  Harlow Shapley

  Science, Men, Hands

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• [Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations.

  Claude Bernard

  Science, Discovery, Ideas

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• The rotating armatures of every generator and motor in this age of electricity are steadily proclaiming the truth of the relativity theory to all who have ears to hear.

  Leigh Page

  Science, Age, Ears

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• I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Gun, Light

  James Clerk Maxwell (1995). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.203, CUP Archive

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• One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Adventure, Science, Simplicity

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• All we can do is search for the falsity content in our best theory.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Falsity, Can Do

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• Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

  John Maynard Smith

  Science, Action, Guides

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• A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

  Heinz Pagels

  Religious, Writing, Science

  1988 The Dreams of Reason.

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• Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Progress, Experiments

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• If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy? But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory. It makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of a theory.

  Stephen Hawking

  Philosophy, Real, Independent

  "Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays". Book by Stephen Hawking, 1993.

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• The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and ignore its weak spots... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm.

  Vannevar Bush

  Science, Ideas, Weak Spots

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• Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. Nationalities should form the constitutive links in a great world alliance, and must be guaranteed an independent life in the realm of the spiritual and for locally delimited tasks, while economic and political objectives must be guided internationally in a spirit of peaceful cooperation for the promotion of mankind's common interests.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Spiritual, Independent, Civilization

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