392 Quotes About Theory

An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. "But the facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not agree with your theory."—"Don't they?" replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, tant pis pour les faits;"—so much the worse for the facts!

Observations always involve theory.

A real translation is transparent.

resistance often lacks an overt political project and frequently reflects social practices that are informal, disorganised, apolitical, and atheoretical in nature. In some instances it can reduce itself to an unreflective and defeatist refusal to acquiesce to different forms of domination; on some occasions it can be seen as a cynical, arrogant, or even naive rejection of oppressive forms of moral and political regulation

Stories were migrants, blow-ins, border-crossers, tunnellers from France and Italy and more distant territories where earlier and similar stories had been passed on in Arabic and Persian and Chinese and Sanskrit.

Theory is the best guide for experiment—that were it not for theory and the problems and hypotheses that come out of it, we would not know the points we wanted to verify, and hence would experiment aimlessly

Do you think things always have an explanation? "Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

one will not break through to the enemy with theory. Directness is most important, when in front of the lion’s den…

The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life