Theoretical Quotes - Page 6

• I started out in nuclear physics. But after I became more sensitized to the environmental and health implications of the nuclear system - I was being trained to be the first women in the fast-breeder reactor in India (and was in it when it first went critical) - I didn't feel comfortable with it. So I went into theoretical physics.

  Vandana Shiva

  Theoretical Physics, Environmental, India

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• We can think of solutions in various theoretical ways, but it's not so on the ground. If they don't have a reference that helps them to belong, then they will end up excluding, and through that they get to feel that they belong on the basis of some narrow identity, language or color.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Thinking, Color, Identity

  Source: dinmerican.wordpress.com

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• Working in theoretical systems can take away the juice. It can also be very beautiful, but when you're trying to satisfy a theoretical principle rather than a sonic reality, then it can become dry.

  Pauline Oliveros

  Beautiful, Reality, Trying

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Knowledge has the form of a tree, and since metaphysics is the most fundamental one of the theoretical disciplines, it represents the roots of the tree.

  Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

  Roots, Discipline, Tree

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The role of metaphysics in relation to other disciplines, whether philosophical or not and including the natural sciences, is thus a foundational role. Lack of clarity in the concepts of metaphysics implies lack of clarity in other disciplines - both theoretical and practical disciplines - employing those concepts or employing concepts that depend on those of metaphysics.

  Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

  Philosophical, Discipline, Roles

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum.

  Susan Sontag

  Thinking, Vacuums, American Universities

  Source: ctheory.net

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• Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you.

  Emma Forrest

  Believe, Love You, Sadness

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• Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" - or physical object - and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.

  Thomas Szasz

  Bipolar, Way, Mental Illness

  "The Myth of Mental Illness" by Thomas Szasz in "American Psycholigist", Volume 15 (pp. 113-118), psychclassics.yorku.ca. 1960.

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• I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too?

  Ayelet Waldman

  Beautiful, Daughter, Mother

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• Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Long, Psychology, Trying

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2003). “Blue Mars”, p.105, Spectra

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• Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

  Tom Robbins

  Order, Turkeys, Why Not

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.139, Bantam

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• Now, it is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be more than sufficient to get you through your examination, which, after all, is what school is all about.

  J. K. Rowling

  School, Views, Ministry

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• Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice -- Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868)

  Karl Marx

  July, Practice, Connections

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• I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they had nor could have sympathy with anything in me.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Should Have, Quality, Shapes

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.96, Penguin

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• I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe — the gods and other spirits — don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their ways.

  Daniel Dennett

  Believe, Intelligent, Order

  Daniel C. Dennett (2006). “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”, p.401, Penguin

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• He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.

  Zadie Smith

  Rose, Political, Construction

  "On Beauty". Book by Zadie Smith, 2005.

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• Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate or enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action-a perilous act.

  Michel Foucault

  Alarms, Done, Levels

  Michel Foucault (1980). “Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews”, p.5, Cornell University Press

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• Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Order, Law, Progress

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.5, Verso

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• One of the goals of philosophy is wage theoretical battle. That is why we can say that every thesis is always, by its very nature, an antithesis. A thesis is only ever put forward in opposition to another thesis, or in defence of a new one.

  Louis Althusser

  Philosophy, Goal, Battle

  Louis Althusser, François Matheron, Olivier Corpet (2006). “Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978-87”, p.268, Verso

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• The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Eye, Heart, Kissing

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• In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Spiritual, Philosophical, Mean

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• An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Mind, Foundation

  C. S. LEWIS (1947). “THE ABOLITION OF MAN”

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• The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

  Albert Camus

  Spirit, Problem, Rebellion

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.20, Vintage

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• Clearly, one does not have to give up being an academic, retreat from rigorous research, or renounce the importance of specialization in order to address major social issues. I don't think you give up theoretical rigor by writing in a way that addresses major social concerns and is at the same time accessible to wider informed general audiences.

  Henry Giroux

  Giving Up, Writing, Thinking

  "Higher Education Under Attack". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• The theory of the lung as a gland has justified its existence and done excellent service in bringing forward facts, which shall survive any theoretical construction that has been or may hereafter be put upon them.

  August Krogh

  Science, May, Facts

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