392 Quotes About Theory

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Theories might inspire you, but experiments will advance you.

I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

The coppers, thinking I must be hacked to bits at the bottom of the Thames, now blame both murders on the Ripper. The theory is so ironic I cannot help but snort out a tirade of titters.

I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too.

My action is my prayer.

You have gone through enough theory, now it's time to take actions.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is ... If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

[Chemist Michael] Polanyi found one other necessary requirement for full initiation into science: Belief. If science has become the orthodoxy of the West, individuals are nevertheless still free to take it or leave it, in whole or in part; believers in astrology, Marxism and virgin birth abound. But "no one can become a scientist unless he presumes that the scientific doctrine and method are fundamentally sound and that their ultimate premises can be unquestionably accepted.