Observation Quotes - Page 32

• That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, World, Found

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.7

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• The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

  George Santayana

  Travel, Character, May

  George Santayana (1953). “Persons and Places: My host the world”

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• Perhaps there is a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagines are one: a state of clairvoyant observation, accessible or possibly accessible to the poet or, say, the acutest poet.

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Poetry, Perception

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• Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

  Joseph Conrad

  Teacher, Reality, Men

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels [Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, etc.] (Book House)”, p.1433, Book House

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• I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Men, Ears, May

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• I spent my 20s working in patient care at a large university hospital, an experience that has informed all my work and has given me a lot of human observation to draw on.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Care, Patient, Given

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• Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Morning, Spring, Mean

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• The idea that the universe is running down comes from a simple observation about machines. Every machine consumes more energy than it renders.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Running, Simple, Ideas

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulation, and unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their scientific knowledge from textbooks.

  James Bryant Conant

  Fighting, Science, Prejudice

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• Of the modern critics, although I disagree with almost everything she says, I admire Mary McCarthy's eloquence and social observation in 'Sights and Spectacles'; she thinks in print, but she doesn't have a real feel for the stage.

  John Lahr

  Real, Thinking, Sight

  "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

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• Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

  Donna Tartt

  Children, Emotional, Adults

  "A Conversation with Donna Tartt, Author of THE LITTLE FRIEND". Interview, www.penguinrandomhouse.com. October 22, 2002.

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• When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language. In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.

  Barry Lopez

  Nature, Home, Intelligent

  FaceBook post by Barry Lopez from Sep 21, 2016

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• It is, of course, a trite observation to say that we live "in a period of transition." Many people have said this at many times. Adam may well have made the remark to Eve on leaving the Garden of Eden.

  Harold MacMillan

  Garden, Eden, People

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• We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.

  Asa Gray

  Book, Order, Ideas

  Asa Gray (1880). “Natural Science and Religion”

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• When we try to observe things that are very small, the act of observation itself will significantly disturb the state we are seeking to measure.

  John D. Barrow

  Trying, States, Seeking

  John D Barrow (2014). “The Origin Of The Universe: Science Masters Series”, p.89, Basic Books

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• The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.

  Nicholson Baker

  Sympathy, Voice, Rooms

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.65, Vintage

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• Impressionism' was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision).

  John Singer Sargent

  Eye, Names, Vision

  "John Sargent". Book by K.C. Charteris, p. 123, 1927.

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• The incomprehensibleness of women is an old theory, but what is that to the curious wondering observation with which wives, mothers, and sisters watch the other unreasoning animal in those moments when he has snatched the reins out of their hands, and is not to be spoken to! . It is best to let him come to, and feel his own helplessness.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Mother, Animal, Hands

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• All observations point to the fact that the intellectual woman is masculinized; in her, warm, intuitive knowledge has yielded to cold unproductive thinking.

  Helene Deutsch

  Women, Thinking, Intellectual

  Helene Deutsch (1973). “Girlhood”

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• It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.

  Michael Behe

  Fundamentals, Goes On, Natural

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• It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

  Michael Behe

  People, Principles, World

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• The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.

  Francis Crick

  Minorities, May, Acid

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• We are told that the first part of the process is to select the very smallest seeds from the smallest plants, which is not at all unlikely, but I cannot speak to the fact from my own observation.

  Robert Fortune

  Firsts, Facts, Speak

  Robert Fortune (1847). “Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China: Including a Visit to the Tea, Silk, and Cotton Countries; with an Account of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese, New Plants, Etc”, p.85

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• I always tell the adults at my dance school, 'Men, you are going to have to do something that you are absolutely not used to: you have got to take command and be the boss.' Because - and this is just an observation - women get their way.

  Len Goodman

  School, Men, Boss

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• For the Members of the Assembly having before their eyes so many fatal Instances of the errors and falshoods, in which the greatest part of mankind has so long wandred, because they rely'd upon the strength of humane Reason alone, have begun anew to correct all Hypotheses by sense, as Seamen do their dead Reckonings by Cœlestial Observations; and to this purpose it has been their principal indeavour to enlarge and strengthen the Senses by Medicine, and by such outward Instruments as are proper for their particular works.

  Robert Hooke

  Eye, Science, Medicine

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