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"Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questions to which an answer is needed."
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"My basic approach to interviewing is to ask the basic questions that might even sound naive, or not intellectual. Sometimes when you ask the simple questions like 'Who are you?' or 'What do you do?' you learn the most."
"I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule?"
"That's a difficult question, because to consider yourself a rebel is sort of ridiculous."
"Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."
"No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?"
"It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones."
Explore more quotes by Talcott Parsons
"The hypothesis may be put forward, to be tested by the s subsequent investigation, that this development has been in large part a matter of the reciprocal interaction of new factual insights and knowledge on the one hand with changes in the theoretical system on the other."
"Special emphasis should be laid on this intimate interrelation of general statements about empirical fact with the logical elements and structure of theoretical systems."
"But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements."
"Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system."
"It is probably safe to say that all the changes of factual knowledge which have led to the relativity theory, resulting in a very great theoretical development, are completely trivial from any point of view except their relevance to the structure of a theoretical system."
"It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system."
"The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life - involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense."
"A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed."
"Empirical interest will be in the facts so far as they are relevant to the solution of these problems."
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