On reviewing other people's work:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.

    --Anton Ego, Ratatouille

Our idealized notion of theory:

A theory is something other than myself. It may be set out on paper as a system of rules, and it is more truly a theory the more completely it can be put down in such terms…A theory on which I rely is therefore objective knowledge in so far as it is not I, but the theory, which is proved right or wrong when I use such knowledge…A theory, moreover, cannot be led astray by my personal illusions…a theory on which I rely as part of my knowledge remains unaffected by any fluctuations occurring within myself. It has a rigid formal structure, on whose steadfastness I can depend whatever mood or desire may possess me…Since the formal affirmations of a theory are unaffected by the state of the person accepting, theories may be constructed without regard to one’s normal approach to experience.

Until we humbly come to grips with the observation that:

Symbols must be identifiable and their meaning known, axioms must be understood to assert something, proofs must be acknowledged to demonstrate something, and this identifying, knowing, understanding, and acknowledging, are unformalized operations on which the working of a formal system depends. (my emphasis)

    --Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (pp. 4 and 258)