Popular quotes about Observation! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
We have three approaches at our disposal: the observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation serves to assemble the data, reflection to synthesise them and experimentation to test the results of the synthesis. The observation of nature must be assiduous, just as reflection must be profound, and experimentation accurate. These three approaches are rarely found together, which explains why creative geniuses are so rare.
John DeweyAs a sick kid, I always looked out the window. The objects of my observation were the sun, the seasons, the wind, crazy people, and my grandfather's death. During my long period of observation, I felt that something like poems were filling up my body. They were in some kind of state and condition that made them difficult to render into words. As a university student, I tried hard to write them in Korean. It was at that time that I foresaw my death and the world's death. I think my poems started at that time.
Kim HyesoonIt is a commonplace executive observation that businesses exist to make money, and the observation is usually allowed to go unchallenged. It is, however, a very limited statement about the purposes of business
Daniel KatzThe philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be.
William FeatherSometimes it takes the better part of a lifetime to find out what your passion is, but in my observation, if you do, it might be the best part of your life.
Jane PauleyThere is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
Francis BaconThere's something essentially fictive about a photograph. That doesn't mean that if you understand that, and you understand how the world is transformed by the camera, that you can't use the limitations or the transformation to have an observation that is a very subtle perception of the world.
Stephen ShoreCorrect observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of any enterprise.
Terry PratchettI thought of the analyst Winnicott's observation: 'It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found'.
Susie OrbachReading, 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 JeffersonAnd I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.
Franz KafkaMy observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.
Kenzaburo OeNatural phenomena undisturbed by man point the way to the realization of a new technique. One needs a keen sense of observation. We must understand Nature before we can adapt its way of working to our needs.
Viktor SchaubergerWe must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.
Antoine LavoisierI cannot resist making the observation that some people use statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost - more to lean on than for illumination.
Alfred E. PerlmanAbout thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!
Charles DarwinGeology ... offers always some material for observation. ... [When] spring and summer come round, how easily may the hammer be buckled round the waist, and the student emerge from the dust of town into the joyous air of the country, for a few delightful hours among the rocks.
Archibald GeikieTo become an academic expert takes years of studying. Academic experts are experts in how and what others have done. They use case studies and observation to understand a subject.
Simon SinekMost conservatives know better than to promote the state funding of art. The result of such funding is the mess that modern art has become. Atonal music is to music what subsidized art is to art. ...The fact that cacophony has reigned almost supreme since 1900 is a testimony to Mises' original observation. Atonal music is to music what socialism is to economics: planned chaos.
Gary NorthWhat do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?
Steven NovellaWhen your life is not in balance and you're struggling to achieve stability, practicing observation without judgment gets really interesting, and very useful. How? Because you can learn to distance yourself from the roller coaster ride of your emotions and circumstances but still enjoy the ride of life.
Tara StilesThere is perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations, than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation as true, as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.
Alexander HamiltonIf someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Arthur EddingtonWe 'rid ourselves of conceptual thought' when, by persistent observation, we recognize the unreality of our self-centered thoughts. Then we can remain dispassionate and fundamentally unaffected by them. That does not mean to be a cold person. Rather, it means not to be caught and dragged around by circumstances.
Joko BeckThere is going to come a day when everyone here is going to need keen observation and wit to ridicule George W. Bush. But when that day comes, all we're going to have are tired puns and goofy looks. Because as you would say, we're suffering from the soft bigotry of low expectorations.
Jon StewartThere is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
Stephen HawkingThe most important thing for me is the direct observation of nature in its light-filled existence.
August MackeThis, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.
Eugen HerrigelBy means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.
Yukio MishimaAll ideas come about through some sort of observation. It sparks an attitude; some object or emotion causes a reaction in the other person.
Graham ChapmanBut I have been watching the crows since childhood. I loved the colour on its face. It can count up to seven โ number seven it can count. They have made an observation. They are very clever birds.
R. K. LaxmanThe future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn't waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation, you can make of it what you will.
Lewis H. LaphamTalents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
Virginia WoolfHer interest in natural history was confined to observation of the crows' feet gathering around her eyes.
Nicolas BentleyI just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.
Lee ChildThe five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.
Bruce BartonIn every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers.
James BoswellObservation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of good business conditions. The purchasers view the good current earnings as equivalent to 'earning power' and assume that prosperity is equivalent to safety.
Benjamin GrahamMan cannot be enlightened through any organization, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through understanding the contents of his own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.
Radhanath SwamiI like things that have to do with what is real, elegant, well presented and without excessive style. In other words, just fine observation.
Elliott ErwittYou have got to know what you're doing on your very first day there. So, look, this is not an attack or anything of that nature. It's just a very simple observation. If you want to be president, you have to start detailing some specific public policy. And I don't think from this point forward in the campaign, voters are going to be as tolerant of the lack of that as they have been up to now.
Marco RubioSomebody once observed--and the observation did him credit, whoever he was--that the dearest things in the world were neighbors' eyes, for they cost everybody more than anything else contributing to housekeeping.
Albert Richard SmithGood men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses.
Arthur KeithIt is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character.
Dinah Maria Murlock Craik