Theory That Quotes & Sayings

There is so much garbage being said about the mark of the beast. A lot of it is based on what I call the 'sky bus' rapture theory, and is not about the Kingdom. It is a kingdom of fear because it is not about the returning power of the sons of God. You do not find anyone who teaches the rapture theory talking about the resurrection in the life of every believer, or of the glory of the Son of God. I do not find the manifestation of the Kingdom in their lives: the power to raise the dead today and for us to live forever in that glory. I do not hear them talking about the coming glory. When darkness rises, the glory must come in a greater measure (Isaiah 60:1-2). I do not see them talking about the coming glory, all the rapture theory does is create a generation of fearful people - a people who will not sow into the future with their words to make their children believe that there is a hope for them to live for today. — Ian Clayton

Like any other science, yoga is applicable by people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is "dangerous" or "unsuitable" for Westerners is wholly false, and has lamentably deterred many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control. — Paramahansa Yogananda

For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the texts' paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of early ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific. — Thomas S. Kuhn

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the experimental proof for the interdependence of the composition and properties of chemical compounds resulted in the theory that they are mutually related, so that like composition governs like properties, and conversely. — Wilhelm, Ostwald

Professor Ramachandran believes this synesthetic connection between our hearing and seeing senses was an important first step towards the creation of words in early humans. According to this theory, our ancestors would have begun to talk by using sounds that evoked the object they wanted to describe. For example, words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small i sound with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts: Little, teeny, petite, whereas the opposite is true of words denoting something large or enormous. If the theory is right, then language emerged from the vast array of synesthetic connections in the human brain. — Daniel Tammet

Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, or if the list were brought up to date every few years. We should say that the students cannot possibly realise the intention of scientific training if they are taught to look on these results as things to be recited and subscribed to. Science may fall short of its ideal, and although the peril scarcely takes this extreme form, it is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

AUGUST 5, 1981. That's the date it became official. It's rare that we can point to an exact date when a business theory or idea becomes an accepted practice. But in the case of mass layoffs, we can. August 5, 1981, was the day President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers. — Simon Sinek

The task of the Church, I suggest, is not to determine which is the theory of the atonement, or which theory of the atonement has pride of place among others. Rather, following Thomas (who stands clearly in line with the majority position of the history of theology), we ought to witness to the fittingness of the atonement: to demonstrate how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings together a wide array of benefits for the sake of the reconciliation of all things to God, that we might have as full an understanding as possible of the work God accomplished in Christ. — Adam J. Johnson

Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature. — Edward Witten

This led Montesquieu to become one of the earliest proponents of the trade theory of peace when he observed that hunting and herding nations often found themselves in conflict and wars, whereas trading nations "became reciprocally dependent," making peace "the natural effect of trade." The psychology behind the effect, Montesquieu speculated, was exposure of different societies to customs and manners different from their own, which leads to "a cure for the most destructive prejudices." Thus, he concluded, "we see that in countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues. — Michael Shermer

If you go with Marshall McLuhan's theory that the medium is the message, as soon as you're hosting a blooper show, you're done. — Bob Saget

Anthroposophy is not a game, nor just a theory; it is a task that must be faced for the sake of human evolution. — Rudolf Steiner

It has become a commonplace that aggressiveness also often has its roots in fear. I am inclined to think that this theory has been pushed too far. [ ... ] The type of aggressiveness that is the outcome of timidity is not, I think, that which inspires great leaders; the great leaders, I should say, have an exceptional self-confidence which is not only on the surface, but penetrates deep into the subconscious. — Bertrand Russell

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you need to feel like you've got three weeks, and so on. — Markus Zusak

I think that the obscurity of the theory is not the fault of quantum mechanics but is rather due to the limited capacity of our imagination. When we try to "see" the quantum world, we are rather like moles used to living underground, to whom someone is trying to describe the Himalayas. Or like the men imprisoned at the back of Plato's cave. — Carlo Rovelli

We had an episode where Bud asks his dad, I was named after the beer, right, Dad? And Ed ONeill, who played my dad, says, Uh ... Right, son! My theory is that Bud Bundy was named after marijuana. — David Faustino

I don't know if I'm embarrassed because I think it's a funny show, but I could imagine there being a snootiness about it, but I do find 'The Big Bang Theory' very funny. I think that's a good show. I think it's fun, I like the actors; I think they're all doing a great job. — Stephen Merchant

I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to literature and theory. I wish I could have more of that in life, but I don't because I'm always reading scripts or things to prepare for movies when I'm reading. — Elizabeth Olsen

The theory is that if you spill all your secrets, you'll have no desire to lie about anything, ever again. Like the worst about you is already in the open, so why not just be honest? — Veronica Roth

The First Insight Theory: Mysterious coincidences cause the reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet. — James Redfield

In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence, an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't? — Sebastian Junger

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here. — Seth Godin

The theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why? The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls — Yuval Noah Harari

Yes, I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and observation that providence, nature, God, or what I would call the power of creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally, and I am certainly one who does with all my heart. — Arthur Rubinstein

We must never assume that local practice conforms with state theory. — James C. Scott

There is another theory that states: This has already happened ... — Douglas Adams

Deism" in its own day referred not to a superficial theological doctrine but to a comprehensive intellectual tradition that ranged freely across the terrain we now associate with ethics, political theory, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology. It was an astonishingly coherent and systematic body of thought, closer to a way of being than any particular dogma, and it retained its essential elements over a span of centuries, not decades. In origin and substance, deism was neither British nor Christian, as the conventional view supposes, but largely ancient, pagan, and continental, and it spread in America far beyond the educated elite. — Matthew Stewart

If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology. — Noam Chomsky

We must point out that in what concerns its material the event is not a miracle. What I mean is that what composes an event is always extracted from a situation, always related back to a singular multiplicity, to its state, to the language that is connected to it, etc. In fact, so as not to succumb to an obscurantist theory of creation ex nihilo, we must accept that an event is nothing but a part of a given situation, nothing but a fragment of being. — Alain Badiou

In the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure. — Sigmund Freud

There's a theory in the field of aesthetics called the uncanny valley. It holds that when something looks almost like a human being - a mannequin or humanlike robot - it creates revulsion in the observer, because the appearance is so close to human, yet just off enough to evoke a feeling of uncanniness, of something that is both familiar and alien. It — Blake Crouch

But actually theory is very practical. Gravity is a theory, for example. It allows you to predict that if you step off a cliff you will fall; you don't have to collect data on that. — Clayton Christensen

The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others. — Kenneth Waltz

That's all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory? — Shmuel Weinberger

Of course, the set of logically consistent mathematical structures is many times larger than the set of physical principles. Therefore, some mathematical structures, such as number theory (which some mathematicians claim to be the purest branch of mathematics), have never been incorporated into any physical theory. Some argue that this situation may always exist: Perhaps the human mind will always be able to conceive of logically consistent structures that cannot be expressed through any physical principle. However, there are indications that string theory may soon incorporate number theory into its structure as well. — Michio Kaku

Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words that have a still less clear meaning and therefore can easily be plugged into any theory. — Leo Tolstoy

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. — Tom Perrotta

Yet, emotionally I could not bring myself to accept either his presence, or his reality. My problem was not a religious problem. God could certainly create as many variations of intelligent humans as he wanted. Presumably God put humans here on this earth, and all non-humans on some other far-away planet orbiting some other far-away star. My problem was a scientific problem. For the Tall White guard to be standing there in the hot sun, for real, would mean that everything I had been taught about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity was simply incorrect. — Charles James Hall

I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science. — Brian Greene

Theory of public goods. Theory that if I take you euro (as an elected state government) and give fifty cents back... you will be happier and I will be satisfied. — Radovan Kavicky

design is a term that bridges theory and practice. It encompasses both a principled approach and a set of contextualized practices that are constantly adapting to circumstances. — Helen Beetham

My siblings and I had this theory that my parents were spies. — Dara Horn

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency. — John Rawls

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

This false epistemology, however, has also led to disastrous consequences. The theory that truth is manifest - that it is there for everyone to see, if only he wants to see it - this theory is the basis of almost every kind of fanaticism. For only the most depraved wickedness can refuse to see the manifest truth; only those who have reason to fear truth conspire to suppress it. — Karl Popper

A witch is a causal theory of explanation. And it's fair to say that if your causal theory to explain why bad things happen is that your neighbor flies around on a broom and cavorts with the devil at night, inflicting people, crops, and cattle with disease, preventing cows from giving milk, beer from fermenting, and butter from churning - and that the proper way to cure the problem is to burn her at the stake - then either you are insane or you lived in Europe six centuries ago, and you even had biblical support, specifically Exodus 22:18: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. — Michael Shermer

So far has Western society departed from the ancient taboos against murder, theft, and rape that we are now faced with juvenile delinquents who have no inner check against wantonly assaulting other human beings at random 'for kicks' while we have adult delinquents capable of deliberately planning the extermination of tens of millions of human beings, in carrying out, also doubtless for kicks, a mathematical theory of games. Today our civilization is relapsing into a state far more primitive, far more irrational, than any taboo-ridden society now known-for lack of any effective taboos. If Western man could establish an inviolate taboo against random extermination, our society would enjoy a far more effective safeguard against both private violence and still impending collective nuclear horrors than the United Nations or the fallible mechanisms of Fail-Safe. — Lewis Mumford

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it's a green light. — Taylor Swift

I want the players to play that way, so I'd better manage that way. The philosophy has been thrown out there. We've been talking about it. We've been working on it, so let's see how it works. Let's see if theory and reality can come together. — Joe Maddon

I've learned that when you get to be a certain age, you can get away with saying a lot of things, some of which wouldn't even be remotely funny if someone forty years younger said them. The Golden Girls ran for years off the same theory and basically used the same four jokes for seven marvelous seasons. — George Takei

According to string theory, if we could examine these particles with even greater precision - a precision many orders of magnitude beyond our present technological capacity - we would find that each is not pointlike, but instead consists of a tiny one-dimensional loop. Like an infinitely thin rubber band, each particle contains a vibrating, oscillating, dancing filament that physicists, lacking Gell-Mann's literary flair, have named a string. — Brian Greene

(At least one theory suggests that while great apes and adult
Humans are sentient, young Human children are not. I admit to a
certain fondness for this conclusion; if childen aren't nonsentient,
they're certainly psychopathic) — Peter Watts

The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge. — John Dewey

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct. — Michio Kaku

Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see where the separation between the too comes in. At least if you must put books on one side and life on the other, each is a poor and bloodless thing; but my theory is that they mix indistinguishable. — Virginia Woolf

To sum up: all nature-spirits are not the same as fairies; nor are all fairies nature-spirits. The same applies to the relationship of nature-spirits and the dead. But we may safely say that a large proportion of nature-spirits became fairies, while quite a number of the dead in some areas seem to take on the character of nature-spirits. We cannot expect any fixity of rule in dealing with barbaric thought. We must take it as it comes. It bears the same relationship to "civilized" or folk-lore theory as does the growth of the jungle to a carefully designed and meticulously labelled botanical garden. As Victor Hugo once exclaimed when writing of the barbaric confusion which underlies the creative function in poetry: 'What do you expect? You are among savages! — Lewis Spence

It is Jill's theory that in every life there is one dog.Other dogs may come and go, but there is one grande affaire. I feel that is probably right and yet it worries me, for it might mean that I am a fickle person. For I seem able to love deeply just the dog I am looking at. — Gladys Taber

So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested. — Edward Witten

He that travels in theory has no inconveniences. — Samuel Johnson

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice

Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by scientific theory. In so far as these obsolete forms are superfluous for science, the fact that they persist violated the principle of the economy of thought, that characteristic trait of the bourgeois temper. — Max Horkheimer

A mathematician says that an electromagnetic wave travels from Andromeda to your eye and that it also extends from Andromeda to your eye. — Bill Gaede

Should Cassandra initiate us, Sibyl? Matt asked, his eyes narrowed like he was testing a dangerous theory that could blow up in his face. — Josephine Angelini

The quantum theory is based on the idea that there is a probability that all possible events, no matter how fantastic or silly, might occur. — Michio Kaku

This irrelevance of molecular arrangements for macroscopic results has given rise to the tendency to confine physics and chemistry to the study of homogeneous systems as well as homogeneous classes. In statistical mechanics a great deal of labor is in fact spent on showing that homogeneous systems and homogeneous classes are closely related and to a considerable extent interchangeable concepts of theoretical analysis (Gibbs theory). Naturally, this is not an accident. The methods of physics and chemistry are ideally suited for dealing with homogeneous classes with their interchangeable components. But experience shows that the objects of biology are radically inhomogeneous both as systems (structurally) and as classes (generically). Therefore, the method of biology and, consequently, its results will differ widely from the method and results of physical science. — Walter M. Elsasser

In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid. — Andrew Sullivan

I'm a firm believer that in the theory that people only do their best at things they truly enjoy. It is difficult to excel at something you don't enjoy. — Jack Nicklaus

Every sensitive person should make his point of view let known, at least, to one person other than yourself on every subject that gets you worked up. This is basic to every social being. And like theory of vibration it gains momentum as the time passes. However, it also happens that it can turn out to be wasted effort. Because we are common people. The fact that we are of no consequence, so are our utterances and statements, makes us indifferent to a lot of issues and situations around us. However, in a set-up we live in, it becomes incumbent upon every educated individual to air our views for the general good of all. Like wise, as public-spirited individuals we must believe in doing something, rather than grumble at home over the breakfast table that the World is not a pleasant place. After all, lighting a lamp is wiser than cursing the darkness. — Manasa Rao

For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible. — Ernest Mandel

Darwin's theory shows the truth of naturalism: we are animals like any other; our fate and that of the rest of life on Earth are the same. Yet, in an irony all the more exquisite because no one has noticed it, Darwinism is now the central prop of the humanist faith that we can transcend our animal natures and rule the Eart. — John Gray

My theory is that church used to be that place. Instead of being a place where you went to look good, it was a place where you could risk going every week to look your worst. — Chuck Palahniuk

[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler , and that was a very interesting book
one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin 's theory
supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus
led to the murder of millions of innocent people. — Ben Stein

Social psychology, the science of how people behave toward one another, is often a mishmash of interesting phenomena that are "explained" by giving them fancy names. Missing is the rich deductive structure of other sciences, in which a few deep principles can generate a wealth of subtle predictions - the kind of theory that scientists praise as "beautiful" or — Steven Pinker

I never thought that others would take my theories so much more seriously than I did. — Albert Einstein

When we encounter unexpected obstacles in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

In his ... 'Geometrical peculiarities of the Pyramids', Ballard shows the relationship between the equal area theory and the golden number. After checking Herodotus' statement via dimensions Ballard concludes: 'I have therefore the authority of Herodotus to support the theory which I shall subsequently set forth, that this pyramid was the exponent of lines divided in mean and extreme ratio. — Roger Herz-Fischler

In certain circumstances, financial markets can affect the so-called fundamentals which they are supposed to reflect. When that happens, markets enter into a state of dynamic disequilibrium and behave quite differently from what would be considered normal by the theory of efficient markets. Such boom/bust sequences do not arise very often, but when they do, they can be very disruptive, exactly because they affect the fundamentals of the economy. — George Soros

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

Once again, my colleague Stephen Hawking has upset the apple cart. The event horizon surrounding a black hole was once though to be an imaginary sphere. But recent theories indicate that it may actually be physical, maybe even a sphere of fire. But I don't trust any of these calculations until we have a full-blown string theory calculation, since Einstein's theory by itself is incomplete. — Michio Kaku

Maybe we should just love one another, even if we don't completely understand the things that people bear in their dark, strange hearts, even if the stars that other men and women are following seem invisible to us. If we make ourselves open to the humanity of others first, maybe understanding will follow. An incomprehensible theory of the universal isn't necessary if your only ambition is to embrace another soul. What you need, maybe all you need, in fact, is the willingness to love. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

We insist that this stuff we call science fiction is not SCI-FI. For some in the ghetto of Genre this is axiomatic, a secret truth known only to the genre kids, that there is proper science fiction and then there's that SCI-FI shit. — Hal Duncan

He knew that he was very near achieving the General Temporal Theory that the Ioti wanted so badly for their spaceflight and their prestige. He knew also that he had not achieved it and might never do so. He had never admitted either fact clearly to anyone. Before he left Anarres, he had thought the thing was in his grasp.
...
He wasn't quite sure he was ready to publish. There was something not quite right, something that needed a little refining. As he had been working ten years on the theory, it wouldn't hurt to take a little longer, to get it polished perfectly smooth. The little something not quite right kept looking wronger. A little flaw in the reasoning. A big flaw. A crack right through the foundations...The night before he left Anarres he had burned every paper he had on the General Theory. He had come to Urras with nothing. For half a year he had, in their terms, been bluffing them.

Or had he been bluffing himself? — Ursula K. Le Guin

It may be true that only those minds which are habituated to think logically can safely trust their intuitive conclusions, on the theory that the subconscious level will do its kind of work as faithfully as the conscious does its kind. — Richard M. Weaver

But is the commercial theory of learning true? Daniel Anderson says that new research suggests that children actually don't like commercials as much as we thought they did because commercials don't tell stories, and stories have a particular salience and importance to young people. — Malcolm Gladwell

The Stetson passage is an allusion to Frazer theory in The Golden Bough that religion originated as agricultural engineering. Through a grotesque process of literalization, all of the dying gods and heroes in The Golden Bough, along with Christ and the Fisher King, are transferred from mythic to modern consciousness ( Frazer himself was an unabashed positivist) to be made explicable in scientific terms as fertilizer. — Jewel Spears Brooker

Spreading straw might be considered rather unimportant, but it is fundamental to my method of growing rice and winter grain. It is connected with everything, with fertility, with germination, with weeds, with keeping away sparrows, with water management. In actual practice and in theory, the use of straw in farming is a crucial issue. This is something that I cannot seem to get people to understand. — Anonymous

The agreements of human society embrace not only protection against murder, but thousands of other things, and it is certainly true that in America - not to mention other continents - the whites have excluded the blacks from some of the benefits of those agreements. It is said that the exclusion has sometimes even extended to murder - that in parts of this country a white man may kill a black one, if not with impunity, at least with a good chance of escaping the penalty which the agreement imposes. That's bad. It's deplorable, and I don't blame black men for resenting it. But you are confronted with a fact, not a theory, and how do you propose to change it? — Rex Stout

The theory called Euhemerism argued that all gods may have originally been only human rulers elevated to divinity by later generations for their benefits to mankind. — Daniel J. Boorstin

We are at a time when postmodernism defies certainty, truth, and meaning; when spiritualism dabbles in quantum theory; and when randomness has become the order of the day. Isn't it ironic that at the same time, the world is on the edge of financial bankruptcy because we have conducted our financial affairs in a random fashion, as if there are no absolutes? — Ravi Zacharias

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

I don't subscribe to the theory that all politicians are crap. I think the 'cool people' often take that position. — Eddie Izzard

He worked for two months without pause. His functional day was twenty-two hours. He would try to go to sleep in a kind of buzz, and awaken two hours later with his thoughts exactly where he had left them. His diet was strictly coffee. (Even when healthy and at peace, Feigenbaum subsisted exclusively on the reddest possible meat, coffee, and red wine. His friends speculated that he must be getting his vitamins from cigarettes.) In the end, a doctor called it off. He prescribed a modest regimen of Valium and an enforced vacation. But by then Feigenbaum had created a universal theory. — James Gleick

Being spiritual-but-nonreligious sounds good in theory - at least it's better than attending antiquated religious institutions. We can do that. And we have. A growing number of us identify as spiritual-but-nonreligious. — Gudjon Bergmann

Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot. — Margot Datz

The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home. — Norman Cousins

Now, from special relativity we know that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin: Greater energy means greater mass, and vice versa. Thus, according to string theory, the mass of an elementary particle is determined by the energy of the vibrational pattern of its internal string. Heavier particles have internal strings that vibrate more energetically, while lighter particles have internal strings that vibrate less energetically. — Brian Greene

That was 1986. That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder. I was aware that these murders very often did not land upon the intended targets but fell upon great-aunts, PTA mothers, overtime uncles, and joyful children - fell upon them random and relentless, like great sheets of rain. I knew this in theory but could not understand it as fact until the boy with the small eyes stood across from me holding my entire body in his small hands. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate. — Richard P. Feynman

I loved him, you know, but I have a theory about love. I think that, however good it is, some love isn't meant to be for ever. — Cecelia Ahern

Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it. — Chaim Weizmann