145 Scientific Theory Quotes

Following is our list of scientific theory quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about theory.

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Famous Scientific Theory Quotes

A scientific theory is a tool and not a creed. - Joseph John Thomson

A scientific theory is a tool and not a creed. — Joseph John Thomson

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. — Wilhelm Reich

Science is an explanatory framework. — Naval Ravikant

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. — Robert Andrews Millikan

There is nothing so practical as a good theory. — Kurt Lewin

The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

The scientific method is a powerful tool for discovering objective truths about the world. — Bret Weinstein

It is theory that decides what can be observed. — Albert Einstein

Scientist believe in things, not in person — Marie Curie

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation. — Carl Linnaeus

But it’s very rare in science to have more than one viable theory. There was the Newtonian theory of gravity and the theory of general relativity. — Naval Ravikant

Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process. — Jean Piaget

Science is organized knowledge. — Herbert Spencer

In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false. — Brian Cox

That’s what science is, that whole complicated story about how the particles are moving faster. It’s not about trends and predictions; it’s about explanations. — Naval Ravikant

Short Scientific Theory Quotes

  • Science is simply common sense at its best. — Thomas Huxley
  • If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts. — Baruch Spinoza
  • A hypothesis is only the first step in any rigorous scientific process. — Jennifer Doudna
  • A good explanation, first and foremost, is testable or falsifiable. — Naval Ravikant
  • Science is the systematic classification of experience. — George Henry Lewes

Scientific Theory Image Quotes

Scientific theory quote Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Number Theory Quotes

I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals. — Benoit Mandelbrot

Mathematics is the queen of sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations she is entitled to the first rank. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among "real" mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as "useless" as the theory of numbers. — G. H. Hardy

Scientific theory quote An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

At a purely formal level, one could call probability theory the study of measure spaces with total measure one, but that would be like calling number theory the study of strings of digits which terminate. — Terence Tao

If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power. — Imre Lakatos

Only now are increasing numbers of political and social scientists beginning to realize that Kelso's theories provide a private-property-based alternative to the imminent passage of a government-distributed "guaranteed income" or "negative income tax." — Hazel Henderson

Scientific theory quote The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fits the facts of it's history.
The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fits the facts of it's history.

Among top grandmasters the Dutch is a rare defense, which is good reason to play it! It has not been studied very deeply by many opponents, and theory, based on a small number of 'reliable' games, must be rather unreliable. — Bent Larsen

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. — Gottfried Leibniz

The theory of numbers, more than any other branch of mathematics, began by being an experimental science. Its most famous theorems have all been conjectured, sometimes a hundred years or more before they were proved; and they have been suggested by the evidence of a mass of computations. — G. H. Hardy

The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population. — Henry Charles Carey

Theory Quotes

Reality is, after all, too big for our frail understanding to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, we have to build our life on the theory which contains the maximum truth.We cannot sit still because we cannot, or do not , know the Absolute Truth. — Subhas Chandra Bose

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. - Benito Mussolini

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. — Benito Mussolini

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. — Albert Einstein

Scientific theory quote Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

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. — Karl Popper

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. — Immanuel Kant

Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior. — Milton H. Erickson

The dirty alliance between religious preachers and possessors of power brought the boon of prisons, gallows, knouts and above all such theories for the mankind. — Bhagat Singh

In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the "Mind of God" is cosmic music resonating in 11 dimensional hyperspace. — Michio Kaku

Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together. — Assata Shakur

The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. — J. Edgar Hoover

Social Theory Quotes

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. — John Rawls

For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.' — Emma Watson

My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing. I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws. — Ida Tarbell

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. — Alexis de Tocqueville

According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy. — Mikhail Gorbachev

As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism. — Rose Wilder Lane

Change the instruments and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them — Bruno Latour

Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations. — Christian Lous Lange

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. — Vladimir Lenin

In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience — Albert Bandura

Scientific Truth Quotes

The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. — Aristotle

It isn't more light we need, it isn't more truth, and it isn't more scientific data. It is more Christ, more courage, more spiritual insight to act on the light we have. — Benjamin E. Mays

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. — Maxwell Planck

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. — Max Planck

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. — Robert M. Pirsig

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 -- 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. — Robert M. Pirsig

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James

There is no 'black mind' or 'white mind', no 'white male of knowing', there is only one truth, and we find it through the scientific method. — Gad Saad

The farther the experiment is from theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize. — Irene Joliot-Curie

Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature. — Louis Orr

Theory Of Knowledge Quotes

Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation. — Auguste Comte

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality. — Paul Watzlawick

Architects should be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. — Charles Darwin

[Knowledge is governed not by] a theory of knowledge, but by a theory of discursive practice. — Michel Foucault

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. — Mao Zedong

An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation. — Howard Gardner

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities. — George Boole

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy. — Jurgen Habermas

Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory. — Leonardo da Vinci

Philosophy Of Science Quotes

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. — Lord Kelvin

The Sun Stone, the famous Aztec calendar, is unquestionably a perfect summary of science, philosophy, art and religion. — Samael Aun Weor

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. — Bertrand Russell

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy. — Jonathan Swift

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. — Richard P. Feynman

The Church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The Body says: I am a fiesta. — Eduardo Galeano

I got fascinated with all of this work in terms of spirituality, philosophy, behavioral science when I was around 18 years old. I've been doing this for 14 years, and I've been doing it online for three years. — Jay Shetty

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. — Lord Kelvin

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. — D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt. — Richard P. Feynman

Scientific Knowledge Quotes

There is no use of simply acquiring titles or amassing wealth if one has no self-respect and scientific knowledge. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

Our reliance upon knowledge and scientific thinking to achieve total development is the only way to bring our nation ahead to the stage of non-oil production, a lesson learnt from nations with little or no natural resources. — Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world. — Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.

Some of the best scientists can't explain gravity; Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, in the end, do they even know? — Logan Paul

An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating. — Marie Carmichael Stopes

Concepts of well-being for countries, for peoples and for individuals are changing. In such a world, to argue for rules that never change would be to deny the reality found in scientific knowledge and reasoned judgment. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket. — James Gleick

Khem was an ancient name for the land of Egypt; and both the words alchemy and chemistry are a perpetual reminder of the priority of Egypt's scientific knowledge. — Manly Hall

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — Nate Silver

I will frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations convinces me that a belief in God-a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge-adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown. — Louis Agassiz

Scientific Method Quotes

I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations. — Andreas Vesalius

Reason and science allow us to properly think about the necessary data that are required in order to answer a given question. This is precisely why the scientific method is the most powerful framework for understanding the world. — Gad Saad

It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification. — Karl Popper

Over his career, Buteyko would be censured by medical critics; he’d be physically attacked and, at one point, have his laboratory torn up. But he pressed on. By the 1980s, he had published more than 50 scientific papers and the Soviet Ministry of Health had. — James Nestor

We are redefining and we are restating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution ... The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or outdated methods on either side of industry. — Harold Wilson

What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal. — Werner Heisenberg

Induction for deduction, with a view to construction. — Auguste Comte

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..." — Carl Sagan

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method. — Richard P. Feynman

By committing the scientific method to religious claims you're committing a logical fallacy — Francis Collins

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More Scientific Theory Quotes

A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. — Karl Popper

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage. — Mark Russell

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. — Paul Dirac

The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory. — Arthur Eddington

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power. — Sidney Altman

With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on. — Fritjof Capra

Before the 1940s the terms "system" and "systems thinking" had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement — Fritjof Capra

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. — Thomas A. Edison

The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it. — Robert L. Park

The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination! — Michael Faraday

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory. — Jimmy Swaggart

Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one. It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis, this must be admitted. — Thomas Hunt Morgan

The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively. — Vilfredo Pareto

The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque. — Philip K. Dick

For reporting a scientific finding, I was called a 'conspiracy theorist.' Only in America is scientific analysis seen as conspiracy theory and government lies as truth. — Paul Craig Roberts

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. — Jon Jones

There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory. — Robert A. Heinlein

Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow. — C. Northcote Parkinson

The hold of the evolutionary paradigm is so powerful that an idea which is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious twentieth century scientific theory has become a reality for evolutionary biologists. — Michael Denton

Scientific theories need reconstruction every now and then. If they didn't need reconstruction they would be facts, not theories. The more facts we know, the less radical become the changes in our theories. Hence they are becoming more and more constant. But take the theory of gravitation; it has not been changed in four hundred years. — Charles Proteus Steinmetz

I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme. — Karl Popper

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image. — Aldous Huxley

Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse. — Oliver Heaviside

Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation. — Phillip E. Johnson

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action. — John Maynard Smith

From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be a metaphysical assumption -- but it is no more so than the assumption that all of life is material and originated out of pure chance — Dalai Lama

For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world. — Stanislaw Lem

A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience. — Maurice Allais

In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage. — Richard Lindzen

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks — Albert Einstein

The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum. — George Will

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious. Told to Valentine Bargmann. — Albert Einstein

Hydrodynamics procreated complex analysis, partial differential equations, Lie groups and algebra theory, cohomology theory and scientific computing. — Vladimir Arnold

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. — Henri Matisse

I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness. — James Bryant Conant

The final outcome cannot be known, either to the originator of a new theory, or to his colleagues and critics, who are bent on falsifying it. Thus, the scientific innovator may feel all the more lonely and uncertain. — Peter D. Mitchell

I think that the theory of evolution is the most unscientific, faith-based, fundamentally brainless idea that ever had the misfortune to come out of a human mind. To compare it to true science is a joke. There is nothing even slightly scientific about it. — Ray Comfort

One does not ask whether a scientific theory is true, but only whether it is convenient. — Henri Poincare

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche. — David Deutsch

All scientific theories are provisional and may be changed, but ... on the whole, they are accepted from Washington to Moscow because of their practical success. Where religion has opposed the findings of science, it has almost always had to retreat. — Nevill Francis Mott

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