A theory must be tempered with reality.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
To an intellectual who is adrift in politics, a theory is an aim; to a true politician his theory is a boundary.
The standard theory may survive as a part of the ultimate theory, or it may turn out to be fundamentally wrong. In either case, it will have been an important way-station, and the next theory will have to be better.
The state of the world, of course, is constantly changing, and so is theory.
There can be theory but, you know, the problem is you've got to be able to test it. So theories are one thing, testing is another.
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.
You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.
I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.