Engineering Quote by Phillip Johnson-Laird

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of…

— Stephen Hawking

A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.

— Karl Popper

A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.

— Paul Dirac

“No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it’s lying there…

— Christopher Moore

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the…

— Albert Einstein

Theory is needed to tell you where to look.

— Marcus du Sautoy

To construct a scientific theory from the data and to be able to recognize that it is a reasonable theory is possible only if…

— Noam Chomsky

Observations always involve theory.

— Edwin Powell Hubble

But actually theory is very practical. Gravity is a theory, for example. It allows you to predict that if you step off a cliff…

— Clayton Christensen

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

— Manfred Eigen

Theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing.

— Jean-Martin Charcot

I was always a data guy, not a theorist. Theorists can maintain total purity. The data are always messy.

— Austan Goolsbee