Theory Quotes

“For a private ownership economy, the first theorem of welfare economics states that, under certain assumptions, an equilibrium of prices and production and consumption plans is a Pareto optimum.”

“A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.”

“The flow of oil is a geological phenomenon on a grand scale. It is a river of carbon that is flowing up from the deep earth.”

“The great merit of functionalism is that it does get you away from the museum case classification of culture traits and gets you to thinking about the inter-connexion of things.”

“Michurin's teaching is a creative Darwinism, the only correct continuation and development of Darwin's teaching.”

“The theory of economics is a mill that will grind out results that are logically implicit in the assumptions that are put into it.”

“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”

“For those who believe that the earth is the centre of the world and the sun revolves around it, there is no need to be afraid of the accusation of novelty.”

“Theory is a tool to understand the world, to make predictions, and to guide experiments.”

“No single theory ever agrees with all the known facts in its domain.”

“Kinship systems have no 'reality' at all except in relation to the myths which are rationalizations of them.”

“Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the latter classifies the former and is therefore a metacommunication.”

“The city is not a tree.”

“The carbon we find in the top layers of the crust is not biogenic at all, but is primordial carbon that is erupting from great depth.”

“Social structures are not things but models.”

“The paradigm for all texts consists of a figure (or a system of figures) and its deconstruction.”

“Social choice theory is concerned with the relationship between individual preferences and collective decisions.”

“Theory like mist on eyeglasses. Obscure facts.”

“You can’t hire a data scientist and ask them to find insights. You have to have a theory about what you are trying to do.”

“The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed.”