#theory

"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."

"Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance."

"You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."

"Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind."

"What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins"for real things."

"There is a common tendency to turn off one's imagination at certain points and refuse to contemplate the possibility of having to do certain things and cope with the attendant moral problems. The things simply get done by the social machine, and one can keep one's clear conscience and one's moral indignation unsullied."

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

"Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism."

"The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable."

"In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious."

"The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations."

"Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing)."

"The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe."