Theory Quotes

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

Murray Gell-Mann

Reward theory. Some people just aren't worth your tears.

Janelle Carreon

In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.

William James

Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.

Alan H. Guth

Proof' is the hallmark of religion.

Bill Gaede

Scientists do not collect data randomly and utterly comprehensively. The data they collect are only those that they consider *relevant* to some hypothesis or theory.

David Lewis-Williams

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

H.L. Mencken

Science is not about making predictions or performing experiments. Science is about explaining.

Bill Gaede

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.

N. Katherine Hayles

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Karl R. Popper

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical.

Richard Dawkins

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.

Benjamin Franklin

Let us work without theorizing,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.

Voltaire

It is the theory that decides what we can observe.

Albert Einstein

If Darwin's theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as far in advance as he is at present

George Eliot

You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.

C.S. Lewis

How empty is theory in the presence of fact

Mark Twain

The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes.

Albert Einstein