Theoretical Quotes

• I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.

  Max Born

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

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• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.483, Princeton University Press

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• The only object of theoretical physics is to calculate results that can be compared with experiment... it is quite unnecessary that any satisfactory description of the whole course of the phenomena should be given.

  Paul Dirac

  Theoretical Physics, Unnecessary, Mechanic

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• I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

  Max Born

  Philosophy, Theoretical Physics, Convinced

  "Schrodinger : Life and Thought" by Walter J. Moore, (p. 1), 1992.

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• Business schools make a fortune forcing their students to take in a HUGE amount of information. The majority of it is theoretical. The majority of that is useless.

  Josh Kaufman

  School, Majority, Useless

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• The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.

  Paul Dirac

  Numbers, Theoretical Physics, Essentials

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• The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

  Erich Fromm

  Science, Successful, Men

  1955 The Sane Society.

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• The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other.

  James F. Cooper

  Principles, Visionaries, Way

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James F. Cooper, 1838.

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• I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

  John Coltrane

  Thinking, Bird, Musical

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• Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.

  Terry Eagleton

  Hangover, Uprising, Levels

  The Guardian, October 27, 1992.

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• When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.

  Max Planck

  Teacher, Science, Dust

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• There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

  Stephen Hawking

  Winning, Differences, Religion

  "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'" by Ki Mae Heussner, abcnews.go.com. June 7, 2010.

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• The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Peace, Military

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb”, p.373, Princeton University Press

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• The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, Animal

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.28, Bertrand Russell

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• Waiting for Godot has achieved a theoretical impossibility — a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps the audience glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.

  Vivian Mercier

  Play, Waiting, Firsts

  "The Uneventful Event". The Irish Times, p. 6, February 18, 1956.

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• It has been a fortunate fact in the modern history of physical science that the scientist constructing a new theoretical system has nearly always found that the mathematics. . . required. . . had already been worked out by pure mathematicians for their own amusement. . . . The moral for statesmen would seem to be that, for proper scientific "planning", pure mathematics should be endowed fifty years ahead of scientists.

  R. B. Braithwaite

  Years, Amusement, Fifty

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• One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.

  J. Willard Gibbs

  Knowledge, Views, Simplicity

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• Therefore psychologically we must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Different, Six, Physics

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.161, Princeton University Press

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• Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Order, Community

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us.

  Allen W. Wood

  Errors, Objectifying, Action

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• They (fables) teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Ideas, Stories, Lessons

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• Outside of mathematics and logic, there are common sense truths, such as that it is snowing that normal observers, in a specified context can agree on, subject to vagueness considerations, and theoretical truths, such as that snow is crystallised water vapour, and maybe in-between truths.

  Catherine Wilson

  Snow, Common Sense, Water

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy. They were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Air, Umpires, Enemy

  KURT VONNEGUT, JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”

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• The funny thing is, nationalism only could have come about in Europe after the invention of printing. You could have this thing that was a book in a vernacular language, and you could imagine there were other readers of this book who you couldn't see, but they were a theoretical union of readers who all use the same language. That is kind of a prerequisite for a national fantasy. You need that thing, and it's a strange thing.

  Ben Katchor

  Book, Europe, Funny Things

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Claims like 'Slavery is wrong' are not fully common-sensical, so they must be at least partly theoretical.

  Catherine Wilson

  Slavery, Common, Claims

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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