Best theory & intellectual Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new information leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.”

“We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.”

Doe Done Action Forget Situation Moral Cases Theory Morality Intellectual Regard Observation Comment Spheres Concrete Speculation Obliged

Book:Democracy and Social Ethics

Source: Democracy and Social Ethics

“[Marx's theories] gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.”

Way Political Theory Intellectual Justification

Author:Neil Kinnock

“In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both organismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.”

“The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.”

Humans Made Life Is Social Effort Theory Ought Judgment Intellectual Human Life Rejection Rejects Logical Worth Living Life Is Worth Living Social Theory

Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“We must nevertheless present all possible interpretations for each observation, so that competing theories can be formulated and defended. In science, as elsewhere, intellectual inertia, the fashions of the moment, the weight of institutions, and authoritarianism are always to be feared. Heresies play an essential role by keeping our minds argumentative and alert.”

Mind Play Moments Roles Fashion Theory Essentials Intellectual Weight Institutions Observation Interpretation Elsewhere Nevertheless Competing Heresy Authoritarianism Inertia

Author:Hubert Reeves

“I can't stand theory because it is imposed by the intellectual. And the intellectual is, by definition, not a creative person. The intellectual is a person who talks about the creative process, but often doesn't understand it.”

Persons I Can Process Creative Theory Intellectual Definitions Creative Process Creative Person

Author:Mary Pratt

“It must be a very dour and pessimistic astronomer indeed who seriously doubts that there must be countless numbers of intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe on other planets which are orbiting around other stars. An attitude which asserts that man is the only intelligent life form in the universe is intolerably arrogant today ... anyone who holds such an opinion today is, fortunately for those who like to see some progress in human conceptions, something of an intellectual freak equivalent to a believer in the Flat Earth Theory.”

“... the word "theory" ... was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as "passionate sympathetic contemplation" ... For Pythagoras, the "passionate sympathetic contemplation" was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge ... To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural.”

Giving May Littles Seems School Understanding Natural Views History Strange Theory Intellectual Mathematics Passionate Delight Mathematical Contemplation Sympathetic

Book:History of Western Philosophy

Source: History of Western Philosophy

“Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us.”

Thinking Knows Way Want Writing Self Faces Wish Deals Powerful Fiction Gone Clear Doubt Theory Intellectual Tools Institutions Discrimination Most Powerful Non Fiction Self-doubt

Author:Bell Hooks

“A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories.”

Law Mother Certain Found Ability Students Theory Type Intellectual Strikes Developing Compulsion Impatient Newton Pedantry Kepler Taxonomy

Author:Raymond Cattell

“[Mathematics is] purely intellectual, a pure theory of forms, which has for its objects not the combination of quantities or their images, the numbers, but things of thought to which there could correspond effective objects or relations, even though such a correspondence is not necessary.”

Form Numbers Objects Theory Pure Intellectual Relation Mathematics Combination Quantity Correspondence

Author:Hermann Hankel

“My work is heavily influenced by critiques that many critical intellectual traditions, especially Critical Race Theory, have made of reform projects focused on legal equality.”

Made Race Theory Projects Intellectual Tradition Critical Focused Reform Critique

Author:Dean Spade

“Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the conditions and problems that most concern me - anti-colonial theories, Foucault, critical disability studies, prison studies and the like are rarely seen in standard US Law School curricula, where students are still fighting on many campuses to get a single class on race or poverty offered - I developed most of my thinking about these topics through activist reading groups and collaborative writing projects with other activist scholars.”

“You do not need intellectuality for deep faith. You do not need it for behaving humanely towards people whether fellow Muslims or non-Muslims. You do not need a concept, a theory, you do not need intellectual arguments for justifying a way of living that is already in place in order for it to proceed.”

People Way Needs Order Theory Intellectual Concepts Argument Fellows

Author:Talal Asad

“One must treat theory-in-use as both a psychological certainty and an intellectual hypothesis.”

Use Theory Intellectual Treats Psychological Certainty Hypothesis

Book:Theory in practice: increasing professional effectiveness

Source: Theory in practice: increasing professional effectiveness

“The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.”

Source: The Works of George Santayana

“The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”

Thinking World Science Existence Struggle Theory Intellectual Species Intellect Extinction Rivals Resisting Struggle For Existence

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

“The theory that the biosphere was created without evolution, a few thousand years ago, is ruled out by overwhelming scientific evidence. To claim that there are 'alternative (always better) Biblical explanations of the same data', which make creationism a reasonable alternative to our best theories of biology and physics, is appalling intellectual dishonesty.”

“My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.”

Source: The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches

“The IMF economists were doubtless shaken by the extreme failures of their prescriptions over many years, and by the collapse of the intellectual edifice of economic theory on which they were relying.”

Years Economic Theory Intellectual Extremes Collapse Economist Prescriptions Edifice Economic Theory Imf

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

Inspirational Play Theory Intellectual Philosophical Blind Mere Theory And Practice Categorical Imperative

Author:Immanuel Kant

“We've had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system? Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.”

Years Changed Theory Development Intellectual Iran Secularism Intellectual Development

Author:Akbar Ganji

Theory Quotes

Related topics

Theory Quotes