Observation Quotes - Page 8

• Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe.

  Maria Mitchell

  Activity, Immense, Universe

  Maria Mitchell (1896). “Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.

  Will Rogers

  Cowboy, Sheep, Genius

  16 Copy quote

• We possess books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

  David L. Ulin

  Book, Waiting, Asking

  4 Copy quote

• But, after all, the sciences have made progress, because philosophers have applied themselves with more attention to observe, and have communicated to their language that precision and accuracy which they have employed in their observations: In correcting their language they reason better.

  Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

  Progress, Attention, Philosopher

  11 Copy quote

• Every man is a valuable member of society, who, by his observations, researches, and experiments, procures knowledge for men.

  James Smithson

  Men, Research, Members

  4 Copy quote

• In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.

  George Santayana

  Justice, Heaven, World

  "Interpretations of Poetry and Religion" by George Santayana, (p. 54), 1900.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It may be that there is such a thing as racial memory, and it is supported by the undeniable observation that the goblins will get you if you don't watch out.

  Jeff Cooper

  Memories, Watches, May

  13 Copy quote

• It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind.

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Men, Elephants, Mind

  John Godfrey Saxe (1873). “The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe”, p.259

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

  James A. Baldwin

  Childhood, Usual, Stories

  "Autobiographical Notes" by James A. Baldwin (1952), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), archive.nytimes.com.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Teaching, Mean, Simple

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• None of us was born knowing or wise; but men become wise by consideration, observation, experience.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

  Benjamin Whichcote, Anthony Tuckney (1753). “Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney”, p.45

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.

  Nigel Rees

  Father, Taken, Mean

  "Sayings of the Century". Book by Nigel Rees, 1984.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.

  Jane Addams

  Intellectual, Done, Spheres

  Jane Addams (2016). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.128, Youcanprint

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.

  Clement of Alexandria

  Art, Children, Mean

  "Paedagogus 2". Book by Clement of Alexandria, (circa 210).

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

  Niels Bohr

  Simple, Light, Years

  Niels Bohr (1934). “Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature: Four Essays”, p.2, CUP Archive

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The young man [Turgot] destined for an ecclesiastical career was placed within walls carefully designed to keep out all currents of new thought; his studies, his reading, his professors, his associates, all were combined to keep from him any results of observation or reflection save those prescribed: probably, of all means for stifling healthy and helpful thought, a theological seminary, as then conducted whether Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or Mohammedan, was the most perfect.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Wall, Reading, Mean

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, p. 165, 1915.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Christian, Views, Organization

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.52, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame a good public name is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Views, Names, Ideas

  "Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 396". Judicial opinion, 1947.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" - the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.

  I. F. Stone

  Reality, Political, Facts

  I. F. Stone (2009). “The Best of I.F. Stone”, p.4, PublicAffairs

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Taste, Mathematics, Natural

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.119

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The result of [the] cumulative efforts to investigate the cell - to investigate life at the molecular level - is a loud, clear, piercing cry of 'design!' The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun.

  Michael Behe

  Intelligent, Cells, Discovery

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hey listen -- I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.

  Woody Allen

  Hey, Littles, Pay

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man who falls straight into bed night after night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, I don't say great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Fall, Sleep

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.69, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

  Charles Lamb

  Truism, Commonplace

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.159, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.

  Plutarch

  Men, People, Asia

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.69

  5 Copy quote

  Show source