Theorists – Quotes

Lenin, the greatest theorist

Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power. Garet Garrett

I kind of think that if you show conspiracy theorists a photo of the dead Bin Laden they will come up with an explanation for why it’s really a Photoshoped picture of Bin Laden asleep. Or his dead cousin Fred. Donald Trump apparently believes that Bin Laden is dead, so that ought to be enough … Read more

Don’t be blinded by

Don’t be blinded by the theorists and a lying press. Ezra Pound

Anybody who has ever

Anybody who has ever owned a dog who barked when strangers came near its owner’s property has experienced the essential continuity between animal territoriality and human property. Our domesticated cousins of the wolf know, instinctively, that property is no mere social convention or game, but a critically important evolved mechanism for the avoidance of violence. … Read more

The lady … is

The lady … is not a producer; in most communities productive labor is by consent unladylike. On the other hand she is the heaviest of consumers, and theorists have not been wanting to maintain that the more she spends the better off society is. Emily James Smith Putnam

One of my favorite

One of my favorite literary theorists, Mikhail Bakhtin, wrote that the defining characteristic of the novel is its unprecedented level of \”heteroglossia\” – the way it brings together so many different registers of language. He doesn’t mean national languages, but rather the sublanguages we all navigate between every day: high language, low language, everything. I … Read more

As of now, string

As of now, string theorists have no explanation of why there are three large dimensions as well as time, and the other dimensions are microscopic. Proposals about that have been all over the map. Edward Witten

Before 2013, if you

Before 2013, if you said the NSA was making records of everybody’s phone calls and the [Government Communications Headquarters] was monitoring lawyers and journalists, people raised eyebrows and called you a conspiracy theorist. Those days are over. Edward Snowden

[The] penalty of death

[The] penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety. Edward Gibbon

So-called \\\”natural language\\\” is

So-called \”natural language\” is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great … Read more