Theory Quotes - Page 35

• Theory can blind observation.

  Carol Gilligan

  Design, Blind, Observation

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• Market forces have no intrinsically moral direction, which is why, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ethics should precede economics. But it doesn't have to. . . . We know this because we've seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; the endangerment of workers; and the sale of dangerous products - from cars to toys to drugs. All in pursuit of ever-greater profits.

  Arianna Huffington

  Air, Water, Car

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• The 'law of wills and causes,' formulated by Comte, . . . is that when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Men, Law, Religion

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.169, Transaction Publishers

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• So here's my theory, and this is such crap science, I don't have to tell you. It's science without microscopes, blood tests, or reality.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Reality, Blood, Tests

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Linger”, p.350, Scholastic Inc.

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• Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Reality, Doe, Break

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• I call it like the domino theory of reality. If you can go one step at a time and it seems to make sense, you can then take your audience into an area that is relatively outlandish.

  Ivan Reitman

  Reality, Steps, One Step At A Time

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• One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, Reality, Order

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• I want the players to play that way, so I'd better manage that way. The philosophy has been thrown out there. We've been talking about it. We've been working on it, so let's see how it works. Let's see if theory and reality can come together.

  Joe Maddon

  Philosophy, Reality, Player

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• There is no shadow of protection to be had by sheltering behind the slender stockades of visionary speculation, or by hiding behind the wagon-wheels of pacific theories.

  Soong May-ling

  Peace, Business, Shadow

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• The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound. . . . Throughout history . . . there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal.

  Corliss Lamont

  Philosophy, Men, Self

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• Evolutionary theory holds that our ability to sense when we should be suspicious has been every bit as essential for human survival as our capacity for trust and cooperation.

  Daniel Goleman

  Life, Survival, Essentials

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• I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Fear, Party

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.

  Edmund Burke

  Taken, Men, Rights

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondance of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.203

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• Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought or issues.

  Dick Morris

  Military, Issues, Political

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• 'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Clever

  Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise, March 15, 1965.

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• None the less, perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with the highest pleasure inscientific theory. The emotion which accompanies the clear recognition of unity in a complex seems to be so similar in art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both processes.

  Roger Fry

  Art, Design, Unity

  "Vision and Design".

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• According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Lying, Essence, Practice

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• Liberals have a set of folk theories that are fallacious. One of them comes from the Enlightenment, and the assumption is that you are supposed to be logical. They assume all you have to do is tell people the facts and they will reason to the right conclusion. This is utterly ridiculous. Thought is mainly metaphorical. The frames trump all the facts.

  George Lakoff

  People, Political, Enlightenment

  "Why Liberals Lose". Interview with Katy Butler, katybutler.com. December 24, 2003.

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• Ever since men became capable of free speculation, their actions, in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of men s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, Evil

  "History of Western Philosophy".

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• But it is not at all certain that this superiority of the many over the sound few is possible in the case of every people and every large number. There are some whom it would be impossible: otherwise the theory would apply to wild animals- and yet some men are hardly any better than wild animals.

  Aristotle

  Men, Animal, Numbers

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• What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common?

  Ken Wilber

  War, Mean, Ecosystems

  Ken Wilber (2001). “A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality”, p.11, Shambhala Publications

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• That theory is worthless. It isn't even wrong!

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Worthless

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• Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned.

  Steven Pinker

  Self Esteem, School, Kids

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.560, Penguin

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• No religious position is loyally served by refusing to consider annoying theories which may well turn out to be facts.

  Norman Lamm

  Religious, Annoyed, May

  Norman Lamm (2006). “Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought”, p.122, KTAV Publishing House, Inc.

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• An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into
  conventional wisdom.

  Steven Levitt

  Experts, Conventional Wisdom, Ifs

  Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (2006). “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”, p.121, Penguin UK

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