Theoretical Quotes - Page 8

• Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable.

  James Kelman

  Dirty, Air, Dust

  1989 A Disaffection.

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• Now these two questions Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

  Pierre Duhem

  Reality, Two, Theoretical Physics

  "The aim and structure of physical theory". Book by Pierre Duhem, translated by Philip P. Wiener, p. 10, 1991.

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• If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.

  Donald Knuth

  Practice, Attention, Spending

  "Theory and Practice". Theoretical Computer Science, 1991.

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• The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Numbers, Ignorant

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.

  Max Horkheimer

  Character, Expression, Theoretical Physics

  Max Horkheimer (1972). “Critical Theory: Selected Essays”, p.133, A&C Black

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• Theoretical approaches have their place and are, I suppose, essential but a theory must be tempered with reality.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Reality, Essentials, Theory

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1954). “Speeches 1949-1953”

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• Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain.

  John Stewart Bell

  World, Quantum, Results

  "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics". Book by John Stewart Bell, p. 29, 1987.

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• I started playing classical music, and I still do. I think music ultimately is kind of on a theoretical level, is about collecting and learning as much vocabulary as possible. It's kind of like writing. It's kind of like writing because the more you read, the more you hear people describe things. The more you soak in, as far as vocabulary, the more access you have in order to express yourself accurately and vividly.

  Eldar Djangirov

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• For thousands of years humankind's finest minds have been struggling with the theoretical problem of finding the forms that would give peoples the possibility, without the greatest of torment, without internecine strife, of living side by side in friendship and brotherhood. Practically speaking, the first step in this direction is only being taken now, today.

  Mikhail Kalinin

  Struggle, Taken, Years

  "Survivor From An Unknown War: The Life of Isakjan Narzikul" by Stephen Lee Crane, (p. 3), 1999.

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• Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

  Max Horkheimer

  Philosophical, Democracies Have, Opposites

  Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.19, A&C Black

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• Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Keys, Ethos, Common Sense

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe From Nothing”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Myth, Stills

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.17, Lulu Press, Inc

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• It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!

  Roger Penrose

  Brain, Might, Action

  Roger Penrose (2016). “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics”, p.821, Oxford University Press

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• My hope is that the film Wall Street 2 will actually serve as a way for us to bridge that gap between Wall Street and Main Street. Certainly that's dealt with in the film of how it does affect everybody, so, you know, I always find that when you can create a movie or a play or a book that gives somebody a safe theoretical place to discuss what is really going on in the day it tends to forward discussion, so that would be my hope coming out of the film.

  John Buffalo Mailer

  Wall, Book, Giving

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Sex itself only only exists in relation to procreation. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes object, and it's just a theoretical objection, but it's worth thinking about, to the whole notion that one calls what people of the same sex do, sexual relations. As a matter of fact, they have precisely turned their back on sexual relations, in order to engage in acts of mutual pleasure that have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality...

  Alan Keyes

  Sex, Thinking, Order

  Alan Keyes' National Federation of Republican Assemblies Speech, www.keyesarchives.com. August 31, 2004.

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• I know a few women younger than me who have careers and children, and so the burgeoning career and family happen at the same time. A few have said something like, "During dating, he was all about feminism. But now I have to ask him to help with the children, I have to ask him to do the dishes, and every time he does, it's like a favor. Where's the feminist I married?" That's theoretical feminism, not practical feminism. I don't think we're all where we need to be. I don't know if we will be in my lifetime. Life is imperfect. But interesting.

  Debra Monroe

  Children, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As far as a theoretical point of view for my generation, I'm probably the most successful theoretician. I mean, double albums and concepts and dresses and major disasters and wonderful successes and yet you don't see the critical review of my work. Why? Because it's all focused on the persona. Billy Corgan. But I get to sort of jump in and be Billy Corgan. But then I get to sort of jump back out and be like, sensitive man in the corner.

  Billy Corgan

  Mean, Successful, Men

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• The returns we read about in the industry sales literature vastly diminish when we move from the theoretical world of market indexes to the real world of actually investing.

  John C. Bogle

  Real, Moving, Literature

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• [Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Principles, Frozen, Action

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas - in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Attitude, Taken, Ideas

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• This law (regarding the theoretical efficiency of heat engines by Mr. Joule), and the law of the maximum efficiency of heat engines, are particular cases of a general law which regulates all transformation of energy, and is the basis of the Science of Energetics.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Energy, Heat

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• To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life - that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion - or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.

  Leo Strauss

  Character, Fate, Two

  "Natural Right and History". Book by Leo Strauss, 1953.

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• One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

  George E. P. Box

  Mean, Hands, Practice

  "Science and Statistics". Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 71, No. 356, (p. 791), December, 1976.

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• That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

  Irvine Welsh

  Pain, Coffee, Class

  Irvine Welsh (1995). “The Acid House”, p.269, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I always was into singer-songwriters like Bright Eyes. When I was in high school I wanted to do a project that was like that. Weatherbox is the name of a song by Mission of Burma so I just had a theoretical acoustic project while I was in high school that didn't actually exist.

  Brian Warren

  Song, School, Eye

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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