Observation Quotes - Page 22

Just as the senses require sensible objects to stimulate them, so our powers of observation, recollection, and imagination do not work spontaneously, but are set in motion by the demands set up by current social occupations.

John Dewey

Imagination, Demand, Occupation

John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.22, Courier Corporation

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I think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him.

Conrad Aiken

Thinking, Splinters, Littles

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My observation is that my dealings with the president on some of the most important issues that the president Donald Trump has to face are as professional and as thoughtful as the American people deserve. The president's handling these duties in a way that I'm incredibly proud of to be part of his team.

Mike Pompeo

Team, Thoughtful, People

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That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hat its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration

Joseph Warren

Wise, Mean, Patriotic

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My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behaviour and what I thought was bad behaviour and tailoring myself accordingly.

Mark Strong

Mother, Baby, Dad

"Robin Hood star Mark Strong: 'Real knights would have needed tea breaks'". Interview with Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. May 8, 2010.

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The object of your training in drawing should be to develop to the uttermost the observation of form and all that it signifies, and your powers of accurately portraying this on paper.
Let painstaking accuracy be your aim for a long time. When your eye and hand have acquired the power of seeing and expressing on paper with some degree of accuracy what you see, you will find facility and quickness of execution will come of their own accord.
Unflinching honesty must be observed in all your studies. It is only then that the ‘you’ in you will eventually find expression in your work.

Harold Speed

Honesty, Eye, Expression

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Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.

Thomas Jefferson

Reading, Reflection, Bears

Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.281, Cambridge University Press

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If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.

Jane Smiley

Horse, Ignorance, Years

Jane Smiley (2014). “A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money and Luck”, p.8, Faber & Faber

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I started as - well, I wanted to be Poet Laureate. And I wanted to be a naturalist. That's how I began. I didn't have any desire to go and be a scientist. Louis Leakey channeled me there. I'm delighted he did. I love science. I love analyzing and making sense of all these observations. So, it was the perfect rounding off of who I was into who I am.

Jane Goodall

Who I Am, Perfect, Desire

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Psychobabble is... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It's an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.

Richard Rosen

Understanding, Frozen, Jargon

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Measurements, observations, descriptions can only be considered scientific when they are independently confirmed by other people.

Jose Padilha

People, Measurement, Description

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Science is based on the possibility of objectivity, on the possibility of different people checking out for themselves the observations made by others. Without that possibility, there is no empirical principle capable of deciding between different arguments and theories.

Jose Padilha

Objectivity, People, Principles

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Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It is perhaps the most influential book that has ever been published, because it was read by scientist and non- scientist alike, and it aroused violent controversy. Religious people disliked it because it appeared to dispense with God; scientists liked it because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe-the existence of living matter. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it.

Henry Lipson

Religious, Book, People

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From my observations, it would seem that the core message of most major religions is right, just and pure. For this reason I can not help but conclude that evil acts committed by religious people are committed not because of their religion, but in spite of it.

Derek R. Audette

Life, Religious, People

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Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Moving, Science, Discovery

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On the most usual assumption, the universe is homogeneous on the large scale, i.e. down to regions containing each an appreciable number of nebulae. The homogeneity assumption may then be put in the form: An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.

Hermann Bondi

Moving, Science, Numbers

"Review of Cosmology," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, p. 107-8, 1948.

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In the same way that Shakespeare was writing very much for his time, he was also unearthing observations that would last for generations beyond him.

Alexis Denisof

Writing, Generations, Way

Source: collider.com

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The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Mistake, Eye, Imagination

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While those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.

Aristotle

Facts, Devotion, Abstract

On Generation and Corruption Book I, Chapter II

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Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.

William Hazlitt

Men, Self, Mind

William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.175, Delphi Classics

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Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.

Samuel Johnson

Travel, Views, Toil

Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.548

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The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.

Wallace Stevens

Play, Imagination, Essentials

Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.259, Vintage

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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.

William Godwin

Children, Inspire, Mind

William Godwin (1797). “The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. In a Series of Essays”, p.78

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But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects... like some trick of magic each object is loosed into a group of impressions - colour, odour, texture... And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world... the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the individual mind.

Walter Pater

Play, Mind, Magic

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Our social relationships are limited, most of the time, to gossip and criticizing people's behavior. This observation slowly pushed me to isolate from the so-called social life. My days pass by in solitude.

Ingmar Bergman

People, Gossip, Solitude

"Fictional character: Dr. Eberhard Isak Borg". "Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)", December 26, 1957.

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