Theories have nothing to do with life.
We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.
Power floats like money, like language, like theory.
One current reaction to change in families, for example, is the proposal for more "education for parenthood," on the theory that this training will not only teach specific skills such as how to change diapers or how to play responsively with toddlers, but will raise parents' self-confidence at the same time. The proposed cure, in short, is to reform and educate the people with the problem.
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
Axioms are delightful in theory, but impossible in practice.
Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.
[The theory of the firm] is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility'.
Theories can be based on any assumptions, however bizarre.
On tight money: It reflects a reversion to the old idea that the tree can be fertilized at the top instead of at the bottom - the old trickle-down theory.
Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.
Theories by women about women have only recently begun to appear in print. Theories by men about women are abundant.
A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
The simplest case, where one is informed that a cat is black because it is black, may be harmless, though irritating and useless; but the actual cases [in statements of evolutionary theory] are always harder to detect than this, and may darken counsel for a long time.
An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom.
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.
You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but--if you will pardon my saying so--all wrong.
The best practice is inspired by theory.
We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions.