This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries...

Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of...

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...

The end of science is not to prove a theory, but to improve mankind.

Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that...

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

As every circumstance relating to so capital a discovery as this (the greatest, perhaps, that has been made in the whole compass of philosophy, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton) cannot but give pleasure...

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.

Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical...

My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.

You know very well that unless you’re a scientist, it’s much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can...

I confess that Fermat’s Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, for a multitude of such theorems can easily be set up, which one could neither prove nor disprove. But I...

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.

Padauža išsyk atkreipė ginklą į mane. Vargšelis visas tirtėjo, prakaitas liejosi kaip iš kibiro, todėl labai jau išmintingai nutariau, kad pistoletas neužtaisytas ir man tik reikia jį atimti. Pirmoji kulka pataikė į pilvą ir ištaškė...

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

Žižek seems to have got Hitchcock out of his system, if not out of his unconscious—one never does that.

A new theory doesn’t change the way things actually happen.

The Attorney General is pleased that the court rejected the defendants’ claim that the legal theory of misdemeanor manslaughter was somehow flawed.

The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence....

I’d decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in...

If it’s true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein...

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton’s gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

That was basically the end of that theory, but I did have my laptop with me. I also wanted to get away from the cleanup. There was a method to that madness.

When you consider time and change, you realize that a people does not originate when individuals merge into a bigger thing. Instead, a people arises when many actions and movements combine into novel patterns of...

I am now convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evidence of the discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The...

M-Theory: The Mother of All Superstrings.

the Z-particle Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be thesmallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.

His Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was,...

Más realidades hay en la experiencia que en la mejor de las teorías.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that the psychological literature on organised abuse has not provided a coherent explanation for the emergence of sexually abusive groups in a range of contexts, or for the difficulties that...

Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only...

Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

…[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of...

There is the potential for a particle of matter to be located where we expect it to be or to be located anywhere in the physical world. So it is with our lives – our...

I thought they might not be a good outside shooting team. But they proved that theory wrong. It’s pick your poison with them.

In theory, you want to put the defibrillators in places like senior centers where there are more cardiac arrests. Instead, we saw more defibrillators in schools. This practice may not be maximizing the numbers of...

Theory-the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

Come with me and . . . think about the electromagnetic theory of light.

Including matter itself, antimatter

People who always arrive early aren’t worth waiting for.

Theory of the Three Represents.

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the...