Douglas Lain Quotes

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

Without theory we can only copy.

History should be written as philosophy.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.

Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.

The specious figments of genius, and the erratic flights of philosophy, may excite our wonder, but they cannot stand the ordeal of scrutiny, or the Lydian touch of experiment.

In much of computer science, I can easily 'auto-grade' your work and give you an instant meaningful feedback. I can't do this when it comes to the subtlety of human thought, language, poetry, philosophy.

In other philosophies, my questions would get answered to some degree, but then I would have a follow-up question and there would be no answer. The logic would dead-end. In Scientology you can find answers for anything you could ever think to ask. These are not pushed off on you as, 'This is the answer, you have to believe in it.' In Scientology you discover for yourself what is true for you.

Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia; that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.

I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand.

To philosophize means to make vivid.

Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions.

Perception of ideas, rather than the storing of them, should be the aim of education.

To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.

The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.