“A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.”

Source: The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature: Revised and Enlarged

Source: Opus Tertium, c. 1267, Ch. 14 as quoted in J. H. Bridges, The 'Opus Majus' of Roger Bacon (1900) Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=6F0XAQAAMAAJ Preface pp.x-xi
Context: All these foregoing sciences are, properly speaking, speculative. There is indeed in every science a practical side, as Avicenna teaches in the first book of his Art of Medicine. Nevertheless, of Moral Philosophy alone can it be said that it is in the special and autonomatic sense practical, dealing as it does with human conduct with reference to virtue and vice, beatitude and misery. All other sciences are called speculative: they are not concerned with the deeds of the present or future life affecting man's salvation or damnation. All procedures of art and of nature are directed to these moral actions, and exist on account of them. They are of no account except in that they help forward right action. Thus practical and operative sciences, as experimental alchemy and the rest, are regarded as speculative in reference to the operations with which moral or political science is concerned. This science is the mistress of every department of philosophy. It employs and controls them for the advantage of states and kingdoms. It directs the choice of men who are to study in sciences and arts for the common good. It orders all members of the state or kingdom so that none shall remain without his proper work.

"Matter" in Man's Right to Knowledge, 2nd series (1954), p. 10; also in Writings on Physics and Philosophy‎ (1994) edited by Charles Paul P. Enz and Karl von Meyenn
Context: In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer, occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, therefore making obvious the discontinuous aspect of physical phenomena.
Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality, inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the result of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen. Therefore particular qualities of an individual observer do not enter into the conceptual framework of the theory.

De Forest Says Space Travel Is Impossible https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KXhfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=my8MAAAAIBAJ&pg=3288,6595098&dq=all-that-constitutes-a-wild-dream-worthy-of-jules-verne&hl=en, Lewiston Morning Tribune via Associated Press, February 25, 1957

[The Many Worlds Theory, 24 October 2018, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRLDatmbgA] (12:16 of 56:11)

"Guayaquil", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Source: My Man Jeeves

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 606.

Talks at Google (Oct 28, 2014)
Context: This mind wandering mode turns out to be very different from the task engagement mode, because it's where thoughts that are loosely connected seamlessly flow into one another like in a dream.... And you begin to see connections between things that you didn't see as connected before.... non-linear kinds of thinking... This is the mode of thinking where your most creative acts are likely to occur and where problem solving is apt to occur.