Quotes
Quotes about Theory
The scientific theory I like the best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline baggage.
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
...one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.
The theory of evolution must be considered as a scientific theory, as theory, that is, proposed to explain or systemize a set of facts, and that no one has any claim to be considered as a serious rival to Darwin in the "discovery" of this theory who did not conduct his evolutionary studies upon a reasonably wide basis of facts. To have ideas, apercus, is not enough, and it is the overevalutation of such clever but uncontrolled guesses which is apt to produce the ludicrous fallacy of combination, in which fragments of the final theory are collected from widely scattered sources and are combined in such a way as to impugn the originality of him who was the first to see how such a synthesis was possible.
The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life.
Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun.
...anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolution" in the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.
We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.
A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
You cannot run a business, or anything else, on a theory.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Life is so unlike theory.
A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility - it may be right but irrelevant.
A young boy is a theory, an old man is a fact.
[Do not] put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.
I never once made a discovery ... I speak without exaggeration that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light ... Yet in only two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.
A theory is no more like a fact than a photograph is like a person.
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.
All theory is against the freedom of the will, all experience for it.
