Consequentialist Theory Quotes

Experience has shown repeatedly that a mathematical theory with a rich internal structure generally turns out to have significant implications for the understanding of the real world, often in ways no one could have envisioned before the theory was developed. ~ William Thurston

I don't think highly of the theoretical or explanatory power of of the theory of evolution. But I think that an evolutionary approach to biological problems is inescapable, and also that in so desperate a problem situation we must clutch gratefully even at a straw. So, I propose, to start, that we regard the human mind quite naively as if it were a highly developed bodily organ, and that we ask ourselves, as we might with respect to a sense organ, what it contributes to the household of the organism. ~ Karl R. Popper

The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough. ~ Augustus De Morgan

Mental events such as perceivings, rememberings, decisions, and actions resist capture in the net of physical theory. ~ Donald Davidson

It's not an academic question any more to ask what's going to happen to a cloud. People very much want to know - and that means there's money available for it. That problem is very much within the realm of physics and it's a problem very much of the same caliber. You're looking at something complicated, and the present way of solving it is to try to look at as many points as you can, enough stuff to say where the cloud is, where the warm air is, what its velocity is, and so forth. Then you stick it into the biggest machine you can afford and you try to get an estimate of what it's going to do next. But this is not very realistic. ~ James Gleick

I confess I sometimes sneak a peek at 'The Big Bang Theory.' I chuckle at their antics. But I cringe when they portray physicists as clueless nerds who are doormats when it comes to picking up women. ~ Michio Kaku

Golden Arches theory: no two countries with a McDonald's have ever fought in a war. ~ Steven Pinker

I get paid to do what I love. If you understand physics, the foundation of the atomic theory and relativity, you understand how the future is going to unfold. You understand what things are not possible. You understand why things work. I get paid to do what I love the most, and that is to work on the Unified Field Theory and to see the future. ~ Michio Kaku

I accept that climate change is a challenge, I accept the broad theory about global warming. I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions. ~ John Howard

Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors - ~ Viktor E. Frankl

But my prevailing theory at the moment was this fucking booth. ~ Sierra Simone

A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory. ~ Clive Granger

Film's thought of as a director's medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It's that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they've had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve. ~ Billy Wilder

My theory is that the Supernatural is the Impossible, and what is called the supernatural is only something in the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before – usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimble-riggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. ~ Flann O'Brien

Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care for dress--the one feminine thing that had never failed her solitary self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered her with a theory (which he really seemed to take seriously) that ladies might combine economy with magnificence if they would draw light chalk patterns on a plain dress and then dust them off again. He set up "Smith's Lightning Dressmaking Company," with two screens, a cardboard placard, and box of bright soft crayons; and Miss Diana actually threw him an abandoned black overall or working dress on which to exercise the talents of a modiste. He promptly produced for her a garment aflame with red and gold sunflowers; she held it up an instant to her shoulders, and looked like an empress. And Arthur Inglewood, some hours afterwards cleaning his bicycle (with his usual air of being inextricably hidden in it), glanced up; and his hot face grew hotter, for Diana stood laughing for one flash in the doorway, and her dark robe was rich with the green and purple of great decorative peacocks, like a secret garden in the "Arabian Nights." A pang too swift to be named pain or pleasure went through his heart like an old-world rapier. He remembered how pretty he thought her years ago, when he was ready to fall in love with anybody; but it was like remembering ~ G.K. Chesterton

My own theory is that the spectacle of the homeless may be necessary to keep the rest of us on the straight and narrow ... ~ Auberon Waugh

I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters. ~ Lydia Davis

There is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false. ~ George Lakoff

How is Marxist-Leninist theory to be linked with the practice of the Chinese revolution? To use a common expression, it is by "shooting the arrow at the target". As the arrow is to the target, so is Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese revolution. Some comrades, however, are "shooting without a target", shooting at random, and such people are liable to harm the revolution. ~ Mao Zedong

So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway?" Why indeed?! But then, why should the proof that 1+1=2 make any difference? One certainly can still act on the belief that 1+1=3. The obvious answer is "because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another." But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be impossible to argue against it; and further, because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not, for even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified, this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don't know, they don't care, or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this should be surprising or make the proof somehow defective. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

In my opinion, the black hole is incomparably the most exciting and the most important consequence of general relativity. Black holes are the places in the universe where general relativity is decisive. But Einstein never acknowledged his brainchild. Einstein was not merely skeptical, he was actively hostile to the idea of black holes. He thought that the black hole solution was a blemish to be removed from his theory by a better mathematical formulation, not a consequence to be tested by observation. He never expressed the slightest enthusiasm for black holes, either as a concept or as a physical possibility. Oddly enough, Oppenheimer too in later life was uninterested in black holes, although in retrospect we can say that they were his most important contribution to science. The older Einstein and the older Oppenheimer were blind to the mathematical beauty of black holes, and indifferent to the question whether black boles actually exist.

How did this blindness and this indifference come about? ~ Freeman Dyson

What we need now is the description of the "describer" or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer. ~ Heinz Von Foerster

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting. ~ Dabney Coleman

She knew this to be true. Maybe not tonight, but some night soon. She was not afraid of death, in theory. If anything, she had nothing but respect and reverence for the Genius of Death, who had shaped this world more than any other force. That said, she did not wish to die quite this moment. She still wanted to see what would happen next, as much as ever. The thing was to resist submersion for as long as possible. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I have this working theory that the main cause of traffic after a car accident is rarely the accident itself. I think people just slow down to get a closer look at the wreckage. ~ Kris Kidd

The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I'm a big fan of outlining. Here's the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I'm liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages. ~ Cynthia Voigt

The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical. ~ Henry David Thoreau

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down. ~ John Ciardi

In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies - which was neither planned nor sought - constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory. ~ Pope John Paul I

Today, the relativity of time is a proven scientific fact. This was
revealed by Einstein's theory of relativity during the early part of the
20th century. Until then, it was not known that time was relative, nor
that it could change according to the circumstances. Yet, the renowned
scientist Albert Einstein proved this fact by discovering the theory of
relativity. He showed that time is dependent on mass and velocity.
However, the Qur'an had already included information about
time's being relative! Some verses about the subject read:
… A day with your Lord is equivalent to a thousand years in the way
you count. (Qur'an, 22:47)
He directs the whole affair from heaven to Earth. Then it will again
ascend to Him on a day whose length is a thousand years by the way you
measure. (Qur'an, 32:5)
The angels and the spirit ascend to Him in a day whose length is fifty
thousand years. (Qur'an, 70:4)
The fact that the relativity of
time is so definitely mentioned
in the Qur'an,
which began to be
revealed in 610,
is more evidence
that it
is a divine
book. ~ Harun Yahya

I've always been fascinated by science - anatomy, quantum physics, space and time theory. I don't understand these things, but the mystery is a part of what attracts me to them. That the world I live in now is complex beyond my understanding only encourages me to believe that there are wild possibilities in creation beyond even the things of this dimension of time and space. If this universe has alternate dimensions outside of our understanding, isn't it possible that we might exist in a life beyond this one, in another kind of dimension that is fuller and more alive than the one we know? ~ Bethany Pierce