Observers Quotes - Page 8

• Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Earnestness

  The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, (Pap VI B 120:13), 1845.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Mean, Wicked

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.450

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

  Steve Allen

  Swimming, Thinking, Animal

  Steve Allen (1998). “Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking : with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can go to a lot of games, but I'm not a player. I'm kind of an observer. That's why I think I do what I do in life. I just observe. That's what I find fascinating.

  Howie Mandel

  Player, Thinking, Games

  Source: www.etonline.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a great observer of delicate situations and women. I really like that bygone type of movement, and for a long time I had been looking for it.

  Manolo Blahnik

  Long, Movement, Type

  Interview with Tim Blanks, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 13, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conscience is the virtue of the observers not the agents of action

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Agents, Action, Virtue

  4 Copy quote

• Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

  Heinz von Foerster

  Objectivity, Made, Observation

  32 Copy quote

• All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control.

  Chauncey Wright

  Character, Hallucinations, Facts

  Chauncey Wright (2000). “The Evolutionary Philosophy of Chauncey Wright”, p.96, A&C Black

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• S. J. Keyser is a shrewd and insightful observer of academe. His experiences in three universities, Brandeis, UMass, and MIT, enrich his perspectives about the way universities work, and his exploration of the culture of MIT is brilliant.

  Paul E. Gray

  Perspective, Insightful, Three

  5 Copy quote

• Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the observer the measure by which to try us; and the fearful power of habit, after a time, suffers not the best will to ripen into action.

  Carl Maria von Weber

  Giving, Suffering, Important

  9 Copy quote

• The observer cannot be left out of the description of the observation.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Description, Observation, Left

  25 Copy quote

• Let the painter composing narrative pictures take pleasure in wealth and variety, and avoid repeating any part that occurs in it, so that the uniqueness and abundance attract people to it and delight the eye of the observer. I say that a narrative painting requires (depending on the scene), wherever the eye falls, a mixture of men of diverse appearances, of diverse ages and dress, combined together with women, children, dogs, horses, buildings, fields, and hills.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Dog, Horse, Children

  4 Copy quote

• But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind.

  William Alfred Quayle

  Character, Thinking, Entering

  William Alfred Quayle (1900). “A Hero and Some Other Folks”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Long, United States, Rewards

  "The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Fall, Men, Numbers

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.86, Rowman & Littlefield

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gravity is neither a force nor a consequence of any space-time curvature. It is simply an orderly spatial illusion to non-spatial observer/s.

  Kedar Joshi

  Space, Illusion, Gravity

  4 Copy quote

• But what we know, we who are either observers of a business we once were in and loved, or are people within it now, our business as a whole, when it is not obsessed with the business of business, is eaten up with a form of cultural conservatism which is truly amazing. Indeed, more often than not it is eaten up with pure reactionary-ism.

  Hodding Carter III

  People, Isms, Obsessed

  4 Copy quote

• If fact were enough, you could take a photo of the subject. Unlike the sensitive observer, however, the camera never selects or comments, never adds or subtracts.

  Paul Strisik

  Cameras, Add, Facts

  Paul Strisik, Charles Movalli (1980). “The art of landscape painting”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.

  Marisha Pessl

  Home, Views, World

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.280, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Independent, Science

  Isaac Asimov (1982). “Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine”

  85 Copy quote

  Show source

• The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.

  Elliot Perlman

  Character, Thinking, Personality

  46 Copy quote

• The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, May, Developing Countries

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.40, Penguin UK

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.

  Mark Rothko

  Eye, World, Companionship

  Susan J. Barnes, John de Menil, Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman (1989). “The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith”, Menil Foundation

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not allow yourself to suppress your thoughts. Instead, let the thoughts come before you and become a sort of observer. Start observing your own mind. Do not try to escape; do not be afraid of your thinking.

  Rama Swami

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Yoga

  73 Copy quote

• The observer is the observed.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Truth

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1993). “The Meditative Mind”, p.41, Krishnamurti Foundation of America

  7 Copy quote

  Show source