Theory Quotes - Page 9

• What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.

  Will Self

  Feelings, Facts, Roles

  "Britain's intellectuals: leading thinkers have their say" by Alain de Botton, AC Grayling, Susie Orbach, Paul Gilroy, Will Self, Mary Beard, Brian Cox, Lionel Shriver, James Lovelock and Lisa Jardine, www.theguardian.com. May 7, 2011.

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• Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.

  Nate Silver

  People, Acting, Degrees

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• Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

  Samuel Smiles

  Wisdom, Real, School

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.343

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• A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.

  Jane Smiley

  Memories, Creativity, Ideas

  Jane Smiley (2008). “13 Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.11, Anchor

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• The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

  Adam Smith

  Change, Numbers, Facts

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• An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.

  Herbert Spencer

  Desire, Elements, Facts

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “Social Statics: Great Essays”, p.110, VM eBooks

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• Mitt Romney's primary season embrace of the social and economic agenda of the more rabid elements of his party doomed him, especially the shrill immigration rhetoric and the harshly insensitive theory that no additional sacrifice or contribution should be sought from those at the top.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Party, Sacrifice, Immigration

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• We've heard some theories, but there is a lot of mystery surrounding my adoption.

  Patti Stanger

  Adoption, Mystery, Heard

  "'Millionaire Matchmaker' Patti Stanger opens up about abortion regrets, her desire to adopt" by Hollie McKay, www.foxnews.com. June 28, 2012.

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• When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Boulders, Needs

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.4576, e-artnow

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• I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Mirrors, Order

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• Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.

  Richard Dawkins

  Teaching, Theory Of Evolution, Immorality

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.402, Simon and Schuster

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• The black asphalt wouls shimmer with vapors I had a theory about those vapors...not released by the sun but by a huge onion buried under the city. This onion made us cry... I thought about the giant onion, that remarkable bulb of sadness.

  Gary Soto

  Sadness, Cities, Black

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• We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.

  Robertson Davies

  Thinking, Numbers, Grandparent

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

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• He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?

  John Green

  Jesus, Kids, Gun

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.151, A&C Black

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• Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines. That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.

  Jean Webster

  Beautiful, Disappointment, Character

  Jean Webster (2016). “Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy: Illustrated”, p.35, Jester House Publishing

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• You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Simple, Years, Soul

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.103, Vintage

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• Dad's Theory of Arrogance--that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play.

  Marisha Pessl

  Dad, Character, Play

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.197, Penguin

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• The theory must not contradict empirical facts.

  Albert Einstein

  Facts

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.348, Running Press

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• We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non reductive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche's preposterous mustache which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead.

  Maira Kalman

  Paris, Mustache, Brain

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• If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Coward, Doe

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.124, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Beautiful, Writing, Helping Others

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• I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, an that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire." (From Rebecca)

  Daphne du Maurier

  Believe, Men, Fire

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• My life isn’t theories and formulae. It’s part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I’ve absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone… from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.

  Audrey Hepburn

  Life, Mother, Vogue Magazine

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• Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility.

  John Stuart Mill

  Thinking, Judgement, Weight

  John Stuart Mill (2015). “On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays”, p.78, OUP Oxford

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• Maybe I’m just tired. (Geary) People only say that when they’re not really willing to deal with the issue at hand. It’s like when you ask a guy what he’s thinking and he says ‘nothing’ but in reality you know he’s checking out another woman and he doesn’t want you to give him grief over it. It’s Thia’s theory. (Tory) I think you need to stay away from her before she corrupts you. (Geary) Nah, it’s too much fun. She has the most misguided views on everything. But I think what I just said is one of the few lucid thoughts she’s ever managed. (Tory)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Fun, Grief, Tired

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