71 Quotes About Theories

You see, time is an ocean, not a garden hose. Space is a puff of smoke, a wisp of cloud.

When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. ... in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest.

There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. ... However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories.

...While I rather doubt whether, as has often been claimed, everyone has at least one novel inside them, it is undeniably true of theories...

Theories without data are like daydreams.

The older you get, the more theories you make up about things.

Why do we love the idea that people might be secretly working together to control and organise the world? Because we don't like to face the fact that our world runs on a combination of chaos, incompetence and confusion.

The moon has seen many a theory come and go.