Quotes About Observation

In matters of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. (not literal translation) - Dan's les champs de observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

All knowledge that is not the real product of observation, or of consequences deduced from observation, is entirely groundless and illusory.

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

There is an overwhelming mass of authentic evidence which can be cited as: direct observation, indirect observation, and supporting evidence or indication.

Observation is like a muscle. It grows stronger with use and atrophies without use. Exercise your observation muscle and you will become a more powerful decoder of the world around you.

Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

The writer has three sources: imagination, observation, and experience

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing.

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.

The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.

I really see no harm which can come of giving our children a little knowledge of physiology. ... The instruction must be real, based upon observation, eked out by good explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed by a teacher whose own knowledge has been acquired by a study of the facts; and not the mere catechismal parrot-work which too often usurps the place of elementary teaching.

A man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him, that will narrowly inspect every part of him.

Knowledge is observation and is given to those who would look.

Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved. Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.

As an engineer, I understood that the natural world operated according to fixed laws. Through my studies, I came to realize that there were, likewise, laws that govern human wellbeing. It seemed to me that these laws are fundamental not only to the wellbeing of societies, but also to the miniature societies of organizations. Indeed, that is what we found when we began to apply these principles systematically at Koch Industries. Through our observation of how they could create prosperity in an organization, I began to systematize my beliefs into Market-Based Management.

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

The kind of knowledge which is supported only by observations and is not yet proved must be carefully distinguished from the truth; it is gained by induction, as we usually say. Yet we have seen cases in which mere induction led to error. Therefore, we should take great care not to accept as true such properties of the numbers which we have discovered by observation and which are supported by induction alone. Indeed, we should use such a discovery as an opportunity to investigate more exactly the properties discovered and to prove or disprove them; in both cases we may learn something useful.

Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.

They (teenage boys)don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation.

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.

There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.

Observation always involves theory.

[Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.

Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.

This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.

The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on.

Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

A lot of my music is just self-observation. Like telling you, "Oh man. What did I just do? How much did I just pay for this chain? Why did I do that? Wait a minute." Let me talk about that. Or like, the temptation. Let me talk about that. Let me observe myself.

A model is a good model if first it interprets a wide range of observations in terms of a simple and elegant model, and second if the model makes definite predictions that can be tested, and possibly falsified, by observation.

I think the very word stalking implies that you're not supposed to like it. Otherwise, it would be called 'fluffy harmless observation time'.

Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game-interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself.

It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.

The attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

It was wisely said, by a man of great observation, that there are as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them.

No longer in a relational universe, can we study anything as separate from ourselves. Our acts of observation are part of the process that brings forth the manifestation of what we are observing.

It must never be lost sight of what observation is for. It is not for the sake of piling up miscellaneous information or curious facts, but for the sake of saving life and increasing health and comfort

You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.

If those persons, who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men's vices, would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home; and that, when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more towards correcting the vices of others, than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation.

No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can comprehend human nature.

When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty, we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed...Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious.