Observation Quotes - Page 38

• Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology.

  Ken Rockwell

  Photography, Technology, Application

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• Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Art, Novelty

  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.195

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• Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Brain, Anything Goes, Movement

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• We learn by observation, imitation and repetition.

  Denis Waitley

  Imitation, Repetition

  Denis Waitley (1985). “The Double Win”

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• Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

  John Searle

  Objectivity, Subjectivity, Conscious

  "The Rediscovery of the Mind". Book by John Searle, 1992.

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• Apple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation. You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobs’] preoccupation. His observation was that the products weren’t good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around.

  Jonathan Ive

  Jobs, Irrelevance, Apples

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

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Real, Products, Illusory

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• There's certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem.

  David Chalmers

  Problem, Conscious, Originals

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• Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Intelligent, Desire, Attention

  B.K.S. Iyengar, John J. Evans, Douglas Abrams (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.12, Rodale

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• Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Funny, Money, People

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• No one trusts a model except the man who wrote it; everyone trusts an observation, except the man who made it.

  Harlow Shapley

  Men, He Man, Made

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• Trust not my reading, nor my observations, Which with experimental seal do warrant The tenor of my book.

  William Shakespeare

  Book, Reading, Tenors

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition: The Complete Works”, p.1485, Oxford University Press

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• Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Men, Light

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.480

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• Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Science, Psychology, Analysis

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1904). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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• Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.

  Ivan Illich

  People, Political, Narcissistic

  Ivan Illich (1992). “In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses, 1978-1990”, Marion Boyars

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• I had never understood quite so clearly the effective power of Jane Jacob's writing - no, her clear-headed observation - as I did reading “What We See”. Maybe that's really the point of writing. That if you take the time to look, to really observe, then you see what is happening, and, with the clarity of that vision, you can act to save neighborhoods.

  Nancy Milford

  Reading, Writing, Vision

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• People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude that ability, although hereditary, is improved by an early measure of adversity and improved again by a later measure of success.

  C. Northcote Parkinson

  Adversity, People, Ability

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• Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system

  Bill Mollison

  Philosophy, Animal, Thoughtful

  Bill Mollison (1979). “Permaculture Two: Practical Design for Town and Country in Permanent Agriculture”, Permaculture Inst of

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• As man reaches out toward the twenty-first century, he will learn to be suspicious of all ideas that are not formulated so that they can be tested by observation.  He will realize that the history of human thought shows that the ideas of which we are surest are the ones we most need to test.  He will realize that his common sense only mirrors his training and experience.  What seems natural and right to him is usually a reflection of the conditions under which he spent his first decade of life.

  Jacque Fresco

  Reflection, Men, Ideas

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• It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Lying, Men, Choices

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2000). “To Be Human”, p.6, Shambhala Publications

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• We live in an extraordinary time. We are caught up in a pace of social and technological change that makes our work, our business and education, sources of anxiety and unfulfillment. Thinking about our thinking and observing our observations can bring us a new world in which work becomes a place for innovation, and in which peace, wisdom, friendship, companionship and community can exist. Let us design this world together.

  Fernando Flores

  Thinking, Technological Change, Design

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• What you consent to can only be discovered by an uncritical observation of your reactions to life. Your reactions reveal where you live psychologically; and where you live psychologically, determines how you live here in the outer visible world.

  Neville Goddard

  Where You Live, World, Reactions

  Neville Goddard “Neville's Spiritual Classics”, Lulu.com

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• There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one mind to know another, and how it is possible to know the contents of our own minds without resort to observation or evidence. It is a mistake, I shall urge, to suppose that these questions can be collapsed into two, or taken into isolation.

  Donald Davidson

  Mistake, Taken, Two

  Donald Davidson (2001). “Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective: Philosophical Essays”, p.208, Clarendon Press

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• The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.

  Niles Eldredge

  Clothes, Yield, Long

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• The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

  Mark Mothersbaugh

  Writing, Events, Stories

  "Mark Mothersbaugh Revisits His Literary Roots". Interview with Danielle Wiener-Bronner, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 09, 2012.

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