Quotes about observation
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“I had long wished for some opportunity of endeavouring to explain… the principles on which the instruments of an Observatory are constructed, (omitting all details, so far as they are merely subsidiary,) and the principles on which the observations made with these instruments are treated…
Such an opportunity appeared to present itself in the course of Lectures which I engaged to give to the Members of the Ipswich Museum and their friends.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

Appearance

“The Goldberg Variations are, as explained in my booklet-text, in short, music that observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music that, like Baudelaire’s lovers, “rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.” Gould is referring here to the circular design of the work, a circularity whose development is polarized, inspired, and fed by more and more new energy fields. The result is a universe that in its significance resembles the alpha and omega of music in general, music that evolves out of nothing and disappears back into nothing as if in a state in which time stands still.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Music, Lovers, Universe, Time

“The movie stars Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson… [h]er teaching methods are inventive. She bribes them with candy bars and free trips to amusement parks, and involves them in the words of that important poet, Bob Dylan (the Tambourine Man might have been a drug dealer!). Soon they're in the school library, finding connections between Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas… [w]hat, exactly, will these disadvantaged inner-city kids accomplish by being bribed with candy bars and the "relevancy" of Bob Dylan? Can they read and write? Can they compete in the job market? An educational system that has brought them to the point we observe in the first classroom scene has already failed them so miserably that all of Miss Johnson's karate lessons are not going to be much help.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dangerous-minds-1995 Dangerous Minds (11 August 1995) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Education, School, Star, Reading

“There is of course no extraordinary fact resting on testimony only, of which it is not possible to presume some error in the observation or reporting, if we be set upon finding one.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Source: Testimony: its Posture in the Scientific World (1859), p. 2

Error

“I can see only one ultimate way out of the morass in which we are engulfed. The present commercial system will have to go, and there will have to be a return to the much simpler systems of co-operation be-longing to a bygone age … To that condition, or something very like it, I am convinced we shall have to return if society is to survive. I say this after a long and close observation of life in many phases. … This is what the miners, I think, in a dim, subconscious way, have already perceived, for they retain in their minds much of the primitive mentality of pre-civilization days.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife (1919)

Life, Age, Way, Thinking

“Artists encounter the landscape they propose to paint — they look at it, observe it from this angle and that. They are, as we say, absorbed in it. Or, in the case of abstract painters, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Ch 2 : The Nature of Creativity, p. 41
The Courage to Create (1975)

Color, Idea, Painting

“The evidence of evolution, and even the event of evolution itself, –the proof of it- are both directly observed, and testable, and demonstrably factual. But religious beliefs are none of the above and never have been; they’re assumed on faith. Whether or not these beliefs turn out to be correct, they are asserted as true without justification in the form of evidence.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"14th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYsnVMjG4lk Youtube (January 3, 2009) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Faith

“If by motivation we mean whatever it is that causes someone to follow a particular course of action, then every action is motivated — by definition. But in most human behavior the relation between motives and action is not simple; it is mediated by a whole chain of events and surrounding conditions. We observe a man scratching his arm. His motive (or goal)? To relieve an itch.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 265.

Behavior, Motivation

“England, with her climate of more than vernal freshness, and in whose summer skies, and rich autumnal clouds, the observer of Nature may daily watch her endless varieties of effect.... to one brief moment caught [by the artist] from fleeting time..”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Introduction of the 1833 edition of English landscape scenery, as cited in Constable's English Landscape Scenery, Andrew Wilton, British Museum Prints and Drawings Series, 1979; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 368
Constable expressed - in his Introduction to the 1833 edition of English landscape scenery - similar sentiments as contemporary landscape-painter Turner, according to Andrew Wilton
1830s

Autumn, Nature, Time, Summer

“To follow Christ is also to identify ourselves with the poor and powerless as he did. The Incarnation is the symbol of this identification. Through his incarnation he inserted himself into the human family and became one with us. As Soares-Prabhu observes, “Jesus ‘declasses’ himself and adopts the life of an itinerant preacher without a home or means of subsistence.””

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Life, Family, Home, Christ

“An essential distinction exists between two stages in the process of advancing our knowledge of the laws of physical phenomena; the first stage consists in observing the relations of phenomena, whether of such as occur in the ordinary course of nature, or of such as are artificially produced in experimental investigations, and in expressing the relations so observed by propositions called formal laws. The second stage consists in reducing the formal laws of an entire class of phenomena to the form of a science; that is to say, in discovering the most simple system of principles, from which all the formal laws of the class of phenomena can be deduced as consequences.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

Source: "Outlines of the Science of Energetics," (1855), p. 121; Lead paragraph: Section "What Constitutes A Physical Theory"

Law, Nature, Knowledge, Science

“It is without doubt true that all men, of whatever race or degree of civilization, are essentially alike; they constitute what certain authorities in anthropology have fitly called "a spiritual unity." But for the individual who cannot expect to find within himself whatever is necessary to understand and interpret this unity, and especially for the observer who does not care even to detect and recognize the existence of such a unity, the difference between Orient and Occident is a puzzle—perpetually baffling and seemingly insoluble.”

George Trumbull Ladd (1842–1921) American psychologist, educator and philosopher

In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908), page 280-281

Men, Understanding

“…by the term Hypnotism, or Nervous Sleep, I mean a peculiar condition of the nervous system, into which it may be thrown by artificial contrivance, and which differs, in several respects, from common sleep or the waking condition. I do not allege that this condition is induced through the transmission of a magnetic or occult influence from my body into that of my patients; nor do I profess, by my processes, to produce the higher [i. e., supernatural] phenomena of the Mesmerists. My pretensions are of a much more humble character, and are all consistent with generally admitted principles in physiological and psychological science. Hypnotism might therefore not inaptly be designated, Rational Mesmerism, in contra-distinction to the Transcendental Mesmerism of the Mesmerists. [ Braid, Observations on Trance or Human Hibernation, 1850, 'Preface.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

In The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father ... http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Vs35STwQYQoC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200, p. 200.

Sleep, Science

“The attempt to construct a fundamental taxonomy of the sciences encounters great difficulties. For instance, logicians and mathematicians disagree among themselves about the objects of their respective research; there is no agreement on the relation of theoretical physics to empirical knowledge and to mathematics. The so-called social sciences are particularly difficult to classify. They have not been demarcated by systematic considerations. In Duhem and Poincarè, general considerations are not only exemplified, but the origins of the concepts and of the problems are traced right from the initial observation of facts if at all possible.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1940s and later, Otto Neurath Economic Writings. Selections 1904-1945 (2004), p. 269

Mathematics, Knowledge, Problem, Science

“As for more than twenty years my principal work has been devoted to the ancient literature of India, I cannot but feel a deep and real sympathy for all that concerns the higher interests of the people of that country. Though I have never been in India, I have many friends there, both among the civilians and among the natives, and I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that the publication in England of the ancient sacred writings of the Brahmans, which had never been published in India, and other contributions from different European scholars towards a better knowledge of the ancient literature and religion of India, have not been without some effect on the intellectual and religious movement that is going on among the more thoughtful members of Indian society. I have sometimes regretted that I am not an Englishman, and able to help more actively in the great work of educating and improving the natives. But I do rejoice that this great task of governing and benefiting India should have fallen to one who knows the greatness of that task and all its opportunities and responsibilities, who thinks not only of its political and financial bearings, but has a heart to feel for the moral welfare of those millions of human beings that are, more or less directly, committed to his charge. India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough. The results of the educational work carried on during the last twenty years are palpable everywhere. They are good and bad, as was to be expected. It is easy to find fault with what is called Young Bengal, the product of English ideas grafted on the native mind. But Young Bengal, with all its faults, is full of promise. Its bad features are apparent everywhere, its good qualities are naturally hidden from the eyes of careless observers.... India can never be anglicized, but it can be reinvigorated. By encouraging a study of their own ancient literature, as part of their education, a national feeling of pride and self-respect will be reawakened among those who influence the large masses of the people. A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with Western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character. The two things hang together. In order to raise the character of the vernaculars, a study of the ancient classical language is absolutely necessary: for from it these modern dialects have branched off, and from it alone can they draw their vital strength and beauty. A new national literature will bring with it a new national life and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed — and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Letter to the Duke of Argyll, published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller

Life, People, Education, Religion

“My observation continues to confirm me more and more in the opinion, that to experience religion is to experience the truth of the great doctrines of Divine grace.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 163.

Truth, Religion

“Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

From the chapter entitled "And Start West," p. 5
From the chapter entitled "Lazarus Go Home," p. 62
Naked Lunch (1959)

“There is little doubt that the observation that quality may depend on price (productivity on wages; default probability on interest rates) has provided a rich mine for economic theorists: A simple modification of the basic assumptions results in a profound alteration of many of the basic conclusions of the standard paradigm. The Law of Supply and Demand has been repealed. The Law of the Single Price has been repealed. The Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics has been shown not to be valid.
More than that, the theories that we describe here provide the basis of progress toward a unification of macroeconomics and microeconomics. They pro vide an explanation of unemployment and credit rationing, derived from basic microeconomic principles. It is a theory in which the extensive idleness that periodically confronts society's resources, human and capital, is seen as but the most obvious example of market failures that prevasively and persistently distort the allocation of resources.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"The Causes and Consequences of The Dependence of Quality on Price", Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1987)

Law, Failure, Dependency

“A more structured connection with the mass is needed, and we must improve it in the course of the coming years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper strata of the government are concerned, we are currently utilizing the almost intuitive method of sounding out general reactions to the great problems we confront.
In this Fidel is a master. His own special way of fusing himself with the people can be appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

People, Way, Problem, Victory

“Martin Luther once observed that your “god” is that which you most fear to lose. More recently, Paul Tillich defined a “god” as an “Ultimate Concern.” For the influential citizens and decision makers of the Late Bronze Age, the “Ultimate Concerns” they most feared losing were power and prosperity, and the political apparatus that was believed to guarantee both. For the elite, these concerns took precedence over almost every other consideration. Like many modern folk, they found it impossible to conceive of the reality of the divine apart from some social system of coercion and force. To worship Baal and Asherah was to affirm the supreme value that power and wealth played in making all human life and experience meaningful.This sort of pagan religious ideology almost inevitably sows the seeds of its own demise. Where power and wealth are the predominant concerns and sacred ends, society dissolves into a self-destructive struggle to obtain them. And the more widely held such a religious ideology, the more widespread the violence will likely be, destroying especially those who most faithfully embrace it.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction the Bible in Context (2001)

Life, God, Age, Fear

“As Akins observes, it is not the point of our sensory systems that they should detect "basic" or "natural" properties of the environment, but that they should serve our "narcissistic" purposes in staying alive; nature doesn't build epistemic engines.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

citing Kathleen Akins. "On Piranhas, Narcissism and Mental Representations: An Essay on Intentionality and Naturalism" (1989)
Consciousness Explained (1991)

Nature

“I always say, be human and preach humanity. I started my humanitarian service by strictly observing four principles: truth, simplicity, hard-work and punctuality, and I repeat, be human, preach humanity and adopt humanity.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted in his Urdu language message, published in the report of National Annual Conference-2004 and Award Ceremony on the International Day of Human Rights, page-14 ( December 9, 2004 at Islamabad –Pakistan http://www.ihro.org.pk/downloads/4th%20Annual%20conference%20report.pdf/) organized by International Human Rights Observer http://www.ihro.org.pk/ Retrieved July 23, 2016

Truth

“There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while^hilosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with philosophies, a conmion and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, ^hilosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations and syntheses, but it is none the less quite istinct from such individual contributions. philosophy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpretation of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks "to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all— the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the Grod Whom theology postulates.
If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to instruct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for this purpose are Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, and that interpretation of the teachings of Christ by philosophy which gave rise, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to Christian theology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well-analyzed, and increasingly profound interpretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invaluable introduction to the study of philosophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the literally huge contributions of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Gregory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of today both these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"

Life, God, People, Religion

“Initially I observed, in sweeping, panoramic vision, a perpetually metamorphosing Persian rug. A few minutes later these patterns segued into cinematic images from childhood—it was kind of like watching home movies.”

David Woodard (1964) American writer, conductor and businessman

LA Weekly (Jul. 26 - Aug. 1, 1996)

Home, Childhood

“I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes. I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes…? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source : Greasing the Ad Engine http://www.boardsmag.com/articles/magazine/20000801/errolmorris.html?page=1

People, Faith, Way, Idea

“I observe, that of late Chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by Learned Men who before despis’d it; and to be pretended to by many who never cultivated it, that they may be thought not to ignore it: Whence it is come to passe, that divers Chymical Notions about Matters Philosophical are taken for granted and employ’d, and so adopted by very eminent Writers both Naturalists and Physitians. Now this I fear may prove somewhat prejudicial to the Advancement of solid Philosophy: For though I am a great Lover of Chymical Experiments, and though I have no mean esteem of divers Chymical Remedies, yet I distinguish these from their Notions about the causes of things, and their manner of Generation.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Source: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Preface Introductory to the Following Treatise

Men, Fear, Lovers, Learning

“Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.

As it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure and mental faculties (I do not here refer to similar customs) should all have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from progenitors who were thus characterised.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter VII: "On the Races of Man", page 233 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=246&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Nature

“It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 1 : Preface

Life, World, Beauty, Way

“The Watchman falls "into" the trap of looking. The "spy" is a different person.... The spy must be ready to "move", must be aware of his entrances and exits. The watchman leaves his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember & must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs himself to be overlooked. The watchman "serves" as a warning. Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named SPY, will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe the watchman. If the spy is a foreign object, why is the eye not irritated? Is he invisible? When the spy irritates, we try to remove him. "Not spying, just looking"”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Watchman. Somewhere here, there is the question of "seeing clearly". Seeing what? According to what?
Book A (sketchbook), c 1965: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 60
1960s

Question, Painting, Personality

“Broca’s famous observation was in itself very simple. There had in 1831 been admitted at the Bicêtre, an insane hospital near Paris, a man whose sole defect seemed to be that he could not talk. He communicated intelligently by signs and was otherwise mentally normal. He remained at the Bicêtre for thirty years with this defect and on April 12, 1861, was put under the care of Broca, the surgeon, because of a gangrenous infection. Broca for five days subjected him to a careful examination, in which he satisfied himself that the musculature of the larynx and articulatory organs was not hindered in normal movements, that there was no other paralysis that could interfere with speech, and that the man was intelligent enough to speak. On April 17 the patient— fortunately, it must have seemed, for science—died; and within a day Broca had performed an autopsy, discovering a lesion in the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere, and had presented the brain in alcohol to the Société d’Anthropologie.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 71: As cited in: Hergenhahn (2008;248)

Alcohol, Intelligence, Communication, Science

“From the end of World War I until the middle of the middle of the 1970s, French public life was shaped and misshaped by three overlapping and intersecting forms of collective and individual irresponsibility. The first of these was political. Reading the history of interwar France, one is struck again and again by the incompetence, the insouciance and the culpable negligence of the men who governed the country and represented its citizens. This is not a political observation, in the partisan sense, but rather a cultural one.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Introduction: The Misjudgment of Paris
The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (1998)

Life, Men, War, World

“Let us imagine that the aboriginal-original human specimen was one of two brother apes, A and B; they were alike in every respect; both were animal space-binders; but something strange happened to B; he became the first time-binder, a human. … He had thus a new faculty, he belonged to a new dimension; but, of course, he did not realize it; and because he had this new capacity he was able to analyze his brother "A"; he observed "A is my brother; he is an animal; but he is my brother; therefore, I AM AN ANIMAL." This fatal first conclusion, reached by false analogy, by neglecting a fact, has been the chief source of human woe for half a million years and it still survives. … He [then] said to himself, "If I am an animal there is also in me something higher, a spark of some thing supernatural."”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Source: Manhood of Humanity (1921), p. 67. Chapter: What is Man?

Imagination, Time, Animals, Falseness

“The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience.
…The ancients knew a few numerical laws… But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. …the new science …not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)

Law, Birth, Nature, Study

“I began to reconcile myself to my forlorn condition, but still I was not what I wished to be: the worst of all was, I had no friend; not a human being that understood me. I wrote daily to my friend Leisewitz; he resided in Hanover, and was just as unhappy as myself, except that he had some friends, and plenty of money. In this respect I was differently situated, and although in want of money to buy books, I was determined not to be any expense to my father. Some watches, snuff-boxes, and rings, presents I had received in Gottingen, soon found their way to the hands of Jews at half price. I was even, against my will, driven to the necessity of accepting small fees from mechanics and peasants. This cut me to the heart; but I could not help myself. The following circumstance, however, overcame me more than all: My father was a man of great knowledge and experience, but, like all old men, he remained faithful to the old method of practice. I visited many of his patients, and without telling me exactly what mode of treatment I was to pursue, he only observed, "You will act so and sohowever, I saw the patients had confidence in my father only, and not in me; they wished me to be his tool, and I therefore followed his mode of practice, and thus lost several of his patients, who could have been saved had I followed my own method.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Men, Money, Books, Faith

“Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Three Days to See (1933)

Feeling, Search, Spring, Flowers

““I really liked that girl.”
“Not loved, evidently,” I observed.
“N-n-no. I supposed not. Though what is love, anyway? Doesn’t it have so infinitely many kinds and degrees and mutations and quantum jumps that— Never mind.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

Love, Girl

“Today we preach that science is not science unless it is quantitative. We substitute correlations for causal studies, and physical equations for organic reasoning. Measurements and equations are supposed to sharpen thinking, but, in my observation, they more often tend to make the thinking noncausal and fuzzy. They tend to become the object of scientific manipulation instead of auxiliary tests of crucial inferences.
Many - perhaps most - of the great issues of science are qualitative, not quantitative, even in physics and chemistry. Equations and measurements are useful when and only when they are related to proof; but proof or disproof comes first and is in fact strongest when it is absolutely convincing without any quantitative measurement.
Or to say it another way, you can catch phenomena in a logical box or in a mathematical box. The logical box is coarse but strong. The mathematical box is fine-grained but flimsy. The mathematical box is a beautiful way of wrapping up a problem, but it will not hold the phenomena unless they have been caught in a logical box to begin with.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

John R. Platt (1964) " Science, Strong Inference -- Proper Scientific Method (The New Baconians) http://256.com/gray/docs/strong_inference.html. In: Science Magazine 16 October 1964, Volume 146, Number 3642. Cited in: Gerald Weinberg (1975) Introduction to General Systems Thinking. p. 1, and in multiple other sources.

Beauty, Way, Mathematics, Problem

“Amongst the half-human progenitors of man, and amongst savages, there have been struggles between the males during many generations for the possession of the females. But mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy. With social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles. They have, also, in the case of mankind, to defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for their joint subsistence. But to avoid enemies or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test and selected during manhood; they will, moreover, have been strengthened by use during this same period of life. Consequently, in accordance with the principle often alluded to, we might expect that they would at least tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male offspring at the corresponding period of manhood.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

second edition (1874), chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", page 564 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=587&itemID=F944&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Life, Imagination, Fashion, Courage

“Be an observer of providence; for God is showing you ever, by the way in which He leads you, whither He means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world's wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever He brings to your hand.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 281.

God, World, Way, Study

“The distinction, between what is done by labour, and what is done by nature, is not always observed.
Labour produces its effects only by conspiring with the laws of nature.
It is found that the agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He does nothing but produce motion. He can move things towards one another, and he can separate them from one another. The properties of matter perform the rest.”

James Mill (1773–1836) Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher

Ch 1 : Production https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/mill-james/ch01.htm  Elements of Political Economy (1821)

Law, Nature

“The real place of women is the house and she has been exempted from outdoor duties…She has however been allowed to go out of the house to fulfil her genuine needs, but whilst going out she must observe complete modesty. Neither should she wear glamorous clothes and attract attention, nor should she cherish the desire to display the charms of the face and the hand, nor should she walk in a manner which may attract attention of others. Moreover she should not speak to them without necessity, and if she has to speak she should not speak in a sweet and soft voice.”

Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) Indian theologian, politician and philosopher

Purdah and the status of Women in Islam, 1991, p. 140, Taj Company Ltd, Lahore, Pakistan.
After 1970s

Women, Housing, Clothes

“Darwin’s model of evolution. . . , being basically a theory of historical reconstruction,. . . is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as is normal in science. . . Moreover, the theory of evolution deals with a series of unique events, the origin of life, the origin of intelligence and so on. Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 75

Life, Intelligence, Science

“"Eh bien, Mademoiselle, all through my life I have observed one thing — 'All one wants one gets!' Who knows?" His face screwed itself up comically. "You may get more than you bargain for."”

Agatha Christie book The Mystery of the Blue Train

Hercule Poirot
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Life

“How do we define consciousness, or what has been called the human soul or the spirit, if it can't be quantified as matter or a particle? … it can be quantified or observed just by a process of elimination.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Soul

“Poor Joshua! Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by respondents who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned what was going on, and yet did essentially nothing except, as the Court revealingly observes, ante, at 193, "dutifully recorded these incidents in [their] files." It is a sad commentary upon American life, and constitutional principles - so full of late of patriotic fervor and proud proclamations about "liberty and justice for all" - that this child, Joshua DeShaney, now is assigned to live out the remainder of his life profoundly retarded. Joshua and his mother, as petitioners here, deserve - but now are denied by this Court - the opportunity to have the facts of their case considered in the light of the constitutional protection that 42 U. S. C. 1983 is meant to provide."”

Harry Blackmun (1908–1999) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissent in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989)

Life, Sadness, Justice, Light

“With respect to the present time, there are few persons who unite the qualifications of good observers with a situation favourable for accurate observation.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xix

Time, Personality

“Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that “Western Civilization” disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals … A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

People, Animals

“Basic moral values must therefore first be internalised in the hearts and minds of its people before we can hope to enforce legislation reflecting these values. We cannot begin to observe man-made laws if we do not have any moral values to start off with in the first place.”

Taito Waradi Fijian businessman

18 May 2000
Comments on the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission

People, Law, Hope, Heart

“Common to all these enemies is that none of them accepts the reality of the "whole system": we do not exist in such a system. Furthermore, in the case of morality, religion, and aesthetics, at least a part of our reality reality as human is not "in" any system, and yet it plays a central role in our lives.
To me these enemies provide a powerful way of learning about the systems approach, precisely because they enable the rational mind to step outside itself and to observe itself”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

from the vantage point of the enemies
Churchman had identified four generic enemies: politics, morality, religion, and aesthetics.
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 24; Partly as cited in: Reynolds, Martin (2003). "Social and Ecological Responsibility: A Critical Systemic Perspective." In: Critical Management Studies Conference 'Critique and Inclusively: Opening the Agenda'; in the stream OR/Systems Thinking for Social Improvement, 7-9 July 2003, Lancaster University, UK.

Religion, Way, Reality, Learning

“Since the universe is infinitely old, you should see some very old stars. According to the big bang theory the universe is only 13 billion years old. No stars should be older than 13 billion years. In our cosmology, stars older than this should exist. So we are on the lookout for very old stars. We made some observations [a year ago] which we are still trying to explain but the simplest explanation seems to be that there stars that are 20 billion years old.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

Star, Universe

“It is a humbling thing to human pride to observe that strength of mind does not preserve its possessor from indulging any favourite delusion; but that this very strength gives its own force to the belief.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People, Confidence, Appearance

“Adam Smith, Say, and especially C. J. Kraus, one of the best teachers of Adam Smith’s theory, are my guides. The aim of my work is to present, in my own arrangement, their writings and thoughts clearly and plainly, together with some of my own observations.”

Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866) Polish noble

Introduction: Cited in: Hiroshi Mizuta, A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith, Routledge, 20116. p. 173.
National Household, 1820

Teachers

“Let me lay emphasis on the opportunity now presented in the United States for observing and, if we are wise, aiding in what I think it fair to say is the grandest opportunity ever presented of developing the finest race the world has ever known out of the vast mingling of races brought here by immigration.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

World, Thinking

“Additionally, borrowing a page from U. S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U. S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel. I hope that this clarification amply addresses your question. Sincerely, Timothy J. McVeigh. USP Terre Haute”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

IN
2000s, Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building (2001)

Hostility, Hope, Question, Time

“the merchant had observed that the marginal utility of daughters decreases with surprising rapidity.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 24, Beauty and the Beast, p. 268

Daughters

“There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect… What is philosophy today… if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?… The ‘essay’ —which must be understood as a transforming test of oneself in the play of truth and not as a simplifying appropriation of someone else for the purpose of communication—is the living body of philosophy, if, at least, philosophy is today still what it was once, that is to say, an askesis, an exercise of the self, in thought.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Il y a des moments dans la vie où la question de savoir si on peut penser autrement qu’on ne pense et percevoir autrement qu’on ne voit est indispensable pour continuer à regarder ou à réfléchir… Qu’est-ce donc que la philosophie aujourd’hui… si elle ne consiste pas, au lieu de légitimer ce qu’on sait déjà, à entreprendre de savoir comment et jusqu’où il serait possible de penser autrement ?… L’ « essai »—qu’il faut entendre comme épreuve modificatrice de soi-même dans le jeu de la vérité et non comme appropriation simplificatrice d’autrui à des fins de communication—est le corps vivant de la philosophie, si du moins celle-ci est encore maintenant ce qu’elle était autrefois, c’est-à-dire une « ascèse », un exercice de soi, dans la pensée.
Vol. II : L’usage des plaisirs p. 15-16.
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

Life, Truth, Exercises, Communication

“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If 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 Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 4 The Running-Down of the Universe

Law, Hope, Nature, Thinking

“All our scientific observations of the universe and quanta can only, in the end, be observations of ourselves.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Universe

“Macroevolution is properly defined as the emergence of new taxa at or above the species level. The only time creationists will use the proper definition is when they are as-yet unaware of the fact that speciation has already been directly-observed and documented dozens of times –both in the lab and in naturally-controlled conditions in the field. In fact, we’ve seen it so many times we’ve had to categorize recurrent types of macroevolution we’ve seen so often repeated. Once creationists find out about all this, their first reaction is to use the excuse that some newly evolved species of fruit fly or fish somehow still doesn’t count because it’s “still” a fly or it’s “still” a fish. Well of course it is! Evolution couldn’t permit them to be anything else. Creationists demand that the new species be so different from their parents that one can’t even tell they’re related. The irony there is that evolutionary theory never suggests that one “kind” of thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different “kind” of anything, not unless you ignore all the intermediate stages –which of course creationists do.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"11th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm277H3ot6Y, Youtube (June 26, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Nature, Parent, Fish, Time

“We now apply these laws of mental processes, to which the explanation of our own inner consciousness leads, to explain the order and adaptation observed on the earth, i. e., to explain Being and historical development.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Law

“Born and brought up in New York City and having survived and thrived there, I carry with me a cargo of memories, some painful and some pleasant, which have remained in the hold of my mind. I have an ancient mariner’s need to share my accumulation of experience and observations. Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak and the never-ending struggle to prevail…or at least to survive.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIII, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life, Death, Pain, Memory

“It is the rare person who can stand aside and observe that our minds and identities are largely constructs of our social order, that we are abstract and arbitrary collections of ideas that resemble dusty archives in the galleries of a museum, visited by nobody, and maintained by a series of those insensible robots that are our habits.”

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 25 “Tom Who Built the Aeroplane” (pp. 254-255)

Idea, Personality

“(Gabriël advises her to make both big studies and small ones) [and small studies, ].. for throwing in three curses and a sigh - forgive me that corny expression - impressions and transient effects on the canvas. Observe especially the hue of every occurring moment.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: ..gaat stil uw gang en hebt vertrouwen in hetgeen ik U zeg, vraag nimmer hoe een ander het deed of doet, tracht de natuur te doorgronden, opserveer alles, tracht te leren zien en zoekt U zelve de gemakkelijkste weg om die weer te geven; men kan uit de natuur verschillende keuzen doen, volgt die het hart u zegt, waarvoor gij het meeste voeld.. ..zoek datgeene waar effect in zit, iets wat duidelijk iets zeggen wil.
(Gabriël raadde haar aan zowel grote studies te maken als kleine:) [en de kleine studies,] ..om in drie vloeken en een zucht, vergeeft mij die banale uitdrukking, indrukken, voorbijgaande effecten, op het doek te werpen. Opserveerd vooral goed de toon van elk voorkomend oogenblik.
2 quotes of Paul Gabriël, from his letter in 1882, to Geesje van Calcar, as cited in Geesje van Calcar. Een echte Mesdag, R. en W. Vetter; Schipluiden 2001, p. 18-22
1880's + 1890's

Forgiveness, Study

“Opponents of Fracastoro met his arguments by feigning imaginary causes, which differed from each other rather in name than in substance. Andrea Mattioli, for instance, an eminent botanist, the illustrator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, a German miner, that a certain 'materia pinguis' or 'fatty matter,' set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Yet Mattioli had come to the conclusion, from his own observations, that porous bodies, such as bones and shells, might be converted into stone, as being permeable to what he termed the 'lapidifying juice.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 29
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Birth

“I find there, especially among the Labour Party, many men who fifty years ago would inevitably have gone into the Christian Ministry. They have been drawn into political life from a deep desire to help the people. Such men are common in all parties to-day…I certainly agree with many observers that since the war the manifest forces of Satan have been more conspicuously at large. But the very manifestation of these forces is calling other forces into the field.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Langham Hotel (11 February 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 196.
1926

Life, Men, War, People

“Mindfulness is nonconceptual awareness. Another English term for sati is “bare attention.” It is not thinking. It does not get involved with thought or concepts. It does not get hung up on ideas or opinions or memories. It just looks. Mindfulness registers experiences, but it does not compare them. It does not label them or categorize them. It just observes everything as if it was occurring for the first time. It is not analysis that is based on reflection and memory. It is, rather, the direct and immediate experiencing of whatever is happening, without the medium of thought. It comes before thought in the perceptual process.”

Henepola Gunaratana (1927) Sri Lankan Buddhist monk

Source: Mindfulness in Plain English (2011), p. 134

Idea, Thinking, Memory, Time

“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign… After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997 of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997) Reviews, One-star reviews

Light

“William Herschel was the first man to give a reasonably correct picture of the shape of our star-system or galaxy; he was the best telescope-maker of his time, and possibly the greatest observer who ever lived.”

Patrick Moore (1923–2012) English writer, broadcaster and astronomer

As quoted on the official website http://www.rbwm.gov.uk/web/libraries_local_history_figures.htm#William_Herschel of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

Star, Time

“Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,
And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone's presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,
But not till after the party's over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Children's Party

Love, Women, Men, Hope

“Natural 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 Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Way, Understanding, Nature, Sense

“I must learn how to express the gentle vibration of things, their roughened textures, their intricacies. I have to find an expression for that in my drawing, too, in the way I sketched my nudes here in Paris, only more original, more subtly observed. The strange quality of expectation that hovers over muted things [skin, Otto's Otto Modersohn forehead, fabrics, flowers]; I must try to get hold of the great and simple beauty of all that. In general, I must strive for the utmost simplicity united with the most intimate power of observation. That's where greatness lies.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Paris, 1898; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, pp. 197-198
1898

Beauty, Way, Flowers, Learning

“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1780s, Letter to John Jay (1786)

War

“I do not think that word “compromise” means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means. Above all, he failed to offer the one thing the White House won’t, can’t bend on: an end to extortion over the debt ceiling. Yet even this ludicrously unbalanced offer was too much for conservative activists, who lambasted Mr. Ryan for basically leaving health reform intact.Does this mean that we’re going to hit the debt ceiling? Quite possibly; nobody really knows, but careful observers are giving no better than even odds that any kind of deal will be reached before the money runs out. Beyond that, however, our current state of dysfunction looks like a chronic condition, not a one-time event. Even if the debt ceiling is raised enough to avoid immediate default, even if the government shutdown is somehow brought to an end, it will only be a temporary reprieve. Conservative activists are simply not willing to give up on the idea of ruling through extortion, and the Obama administration has decided, wisely, that it will not give in to extortion.So how does this end? How does America become governable again?”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Regarding the ongoing 2013 U.S. government shutdown
[Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/krugman-the-dixiecrat-solution.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381867276-0uKEJS5eBZAKIo/by2ipKQ, The Dixiecrat Solution, New York Times, October 13, 2013, October 15, 2013]
The New York Times Columns

Money, Health, Idea, Thinking

“I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.”

Richard Hooker (1554–1600) English bishop and Anglican Divine

Izaac Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker. In Walton's Lives, George Saintsbury, ed., reprinted in Oxford World's Classics (1927).
About

Law

“The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Las Menias
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)

Parting

“Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life, Death, Men, War

“You see, dear reader, so much of what's doled out as punk merely amounts to saying I suck, you suck, the world sucks, and who gives a damn — which is, er, ah, somehow insufficient.Don't ask me why; I'm just an observer, really. But any observer could tell that, to put in in terms of Us vs. Them, saying the above is exactly what They would want you to do, because it amounts to capitulation.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 225
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

World

“Vertically striped sheets of paper, the bands of which are 8.7 cms wide, alternate white and colored, are stuck over internal and external surfaces: walls, fences, display windows, etc.; and/or cloth/canvas support, vertical stripes, white and colored bands each 8.7 cms, the two ends covered with dull white paint.
I record that this is my work for the last four years, without any evolution or way out. This is the past: it does not imply either that it will be the same for another ten or fifteen years or that it will change tomorrow.
The perspective we are beginning to have, thanks to these past four years, allows a few considerations of the direct and indirect implications for the very conception of art. This apparent break (no research, or any formal evolution for four years) offers a platform that we shall situate at zero level, when the observations both internal (conceptual transformation as regards the action/praxis of a similar form) and external (work/production presented by others) are numerous and rendered all the easier as they are not invested in the various surrounding movements, but are rather derived from their absence.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

" Beware!" ("Mise en garde!") http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/buren1.pdf, in Konzeption/Conception, translated by Charles Harrison and Peter Townsend (Leverkusen: Stadtischer Museum, 1969. 1960s

Art, Color, Way, Support

“Observe a method in the distribution of your time. Every hour will then know its proper employment, and no time will be lost”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Bishop George Horne, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.

Time

“Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V

Business, Time

“Some information and observations of recent date have led me to draw up plans that I would like to bring to your attention. This concerns Jehovah’s Witnesses.. . . How are we going to govern and pacify Russia when. . . we will have conquered vast areas of its territory?. . . All forms of religion and the pacifist sects must be supported . . . , among all the others the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is well-known that the latter have characteristics incredibly positive for us: Apart from the fact that they refuse military service and anything to do with war . . . , they are incredibly reliable, do not drink, do not smoke; they are relentless workers and of rare honesty. For them the spoken word stands. These are ideal characteristics . . . , enviable qualities.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

In one of his letters to Gestapo chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, July 21, 1944 cited in Awake! magazine, 1993, 4/22, article: What Hope for an End to War?
1940s

War, Religion, Drink, Support

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Money, War, World, Way

“The Republican Party recognizes the right of the majority to govern, and their power to enforce that right against all attempts at disunion, come from what quarter they may. It is based upon the great fundamental principle upon which the National Government rests, that the Constitution, and all laws made in pursuance thereof, are to be faithfully observed and enforced, and it demands economy and a rigid accountability on the part of all public officers.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Law, Parting

“[In these circumstances the peasant had little interest in cultivating the land. Bernier observes that] “as the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion… the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great part rendered unproductive… The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value… without leaving me the means (even) to drag my own miserable existence? - The Timariots (Timurids), Governors and Revenue contractors, on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds, and why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment… Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or abscond…””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Money, Question, Time, Parting

“During life, a spirit is held to the body by his semi-material envelope, or perispirit. Death is the destruction of the body only, but not of this second envelope, which separates itself from the body when the play of organic life ceases in the latter. Observation shows us that the separation of the perispirit from the body is not suddenly completed at the moment of death, but is only effected gradually, and more or less slowly in different individuals. In some cases it is effected so quickly that the perispirit is entirely separated from the body within a few hours of the death of the latter but in other cases, and especially in the case of those whose life has been grossly material and sensual, this deliverance is much less rapid, and sometimes takes days, weeks, and even months, for its accomplishment. This delay does not imply the slightest persistence of vitality in the body, nor any possibility of its return to life, but is simply the result of a certain affinity between the body and the spirit which affinity is always more or less tenacious in proportion to the preponderance of materiality in the affections of the spirit during his earthly life.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 116.

Life, Death

“It is forbidden for religious behavior to compromise a personal, natural, moral sensibility. If it does, our fear of heaven is no longer pure. An indication of its purity is that our nature and moral sense becomes more exalted as a consequence of religious inspiration. But if these opposites occur, then the moral character of the individual or group is dismissed by religious observance, and we have certainly been mistaken in our faith.”

Abraham Isaac Kook book Orot

Orot

Fear, Faith, Behavior, Nature

“Civil libertarians do not deny that FISA hampers our ability to counter terrorists. Citing the abuses alleged by the Church Commitee, however, they argue that chronic insecurity is the price we must pay to preserve our liberties. But the United States was not a fascist dictatorship before Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter rode to the rescue. Our current surveillance rules are nether constitutionally required, nor traditionally American. They were observed neither by Senator Kennedy's elder brothers, nor by any presidents or attorneys general before the Carter presidency. For the first two centuries of our country's history, threats to our national security were countered without warrant. And the Supreme Court, from Olmstead v. U. S. (1928) to U. S. v. U. S. District Court (1972), has allowed warrantless surveillance in national security, as opposed to criminal, investigations.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Uncuff the FBI: Congress Must Undo the Church Committe's Damage (2002)

History, Country

“1) You would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safeguards, to halt the further introduction of such weapons systems into Cuba.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Second Letter to Nikita Khrushchev

“What we mean by the laws of nature, are those laws which are deduced from that series of events, which, by divine appointment, follow each other in the moral and physical world; the former of which we shall here have occasion principally to consider, the present question altogether, respecting the moral government of God — a consideration which our author has entirely neglected, in his estimation of the credibility of miracles. Examining the question therefore upon this principle, it is manifest, that the extraordinary nature of the fact is no ground for disbelief, provided such a fact, in, a moral point of view, was, from the condition of man, become necessary; for in that case, the Deky, by dispensing his assistance in proportion to our wants, acted upon the same principle as in his more 'ordinary operations. For however ' opposite the physical effects may be, if their moral tendency be the same, they form a part of the jmoral law. Now in those actions which are called miracles, the Deity is directed by the same moral principle as in his usual dispensations; and therefore being influenced by the same motive to accomplish the same end, the laws of God's moral government are not violated, such laws being established by the motives and the ends produced, and not by the means employed. To prove therefore the moral laws to be the same in those actions called miraculous, as in common events, it is not the actions thetnselves which are to be considered, but the principles by which they were directed, and their consequences, for if these be the same, the Deity acts by the same laws. And here, moral analogy will be found to confirm the truth of the miracles recorded in scripture. But as the moral government of God is directed by motives which lie beyond the reach of human investigation, we have no principles by which we can judge concerning the probability of the happening of any new event which respects the moral world; we cannot therefore pronounce any extraordinary event of that nature to be a violation of the moral law of God's dispensations; but we can nevertheless judge of its agreement with that law, so far as it has fallen under our observation. But our author leaves out the consideration of God's moral government, and reasons simply -on the facts which arc said to have nappened, without any reference to an end; we will therefore examine how far his conclusions are just upon this principle.
He defines miracles to be "a violation of the laws of nature;" he undoubtedly means the physical laws, as no part of his reasoning has any reference to them in a moral point of view. Now these laws must be deduced, either from his own view of events only, or from that, and testimony jojntly; and if testimony beallowed on one part, it ought also to be admitted on the other, granting that there is no impossibility in the fact attested. But the laws by which the Deity governs the universe can, at best, only be inferred from the whole series of his dispensations from the beginning of the world; testimony must therefore necessarily be admitted in establishing these laws. Now our author, in deducing the laws of nature, rejects all well authenticated miraculous events, granted to be possible, and therefore not altogether incredible and to be rejected without examination, and thence establishes a law to prove against their credibility; but the proof of a position ought to proceed upon principles which are totally independent of any supposition of its being either true or falser. His conclusion therefore is not deduced by just reasoning from acknowledged principles, but it is a necessary consequence of his own arbitrary supposition. "Tis a miracle," says he, "that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country." Now, testimony, confirmed by every proof which can tend to establish a true matter of fact, asserts that such an event; has happened. But our author argues against the credibility of this, because it is contrary to the laws of nature; and in establishing these laws, he rejects all such extraordinary facts, although they are authenticated by all the evidence which such facts can possibly admit of; taking thereby into consideration, events of that kind only which have fallen within the sphere of his own observations, as if the whole series of God's dispensations were necessarily included in the course of a few years. But who shall thus circumscribe the operations of divine power and infinite wisdom, and say, "Hitherto shall thou go, and no further."”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Before he rejected circumstances of this kind in establishing the laws of nature, he should, at least, have shewn, that we have not all that evidence for them which we might "have had" upon supposition that they were true ; he should also have shewn, in a moral point of view, that the events were inconsistent with the ordinary operations of Providence ; and that there was no end to justify the means. Whereas, on the contrary, there is all the evidence for them which a real matter of fact can possibly have ; they are perfectly consistent with all the moral dispensations of Providence and at the same time that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most unexceptionably attested, we discover a moral intention in the miracle, which very satisfactorily accounts for that exertion of divine power? Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 48; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA259," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 259-261

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

“My tactic would be to take a quick single and observe him from the other end.”

Geoff Boycott (1940) cricket player of England

On Shane Warne, 1994 http://www.westyorkshirecricket.co.uk/#/jokes/4520246600.

“I wish I were Commander in Chief of India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement (not in the least regarding them as if they lived in the Strand, London, or at Camden Town), should be to proclaim to them in their language, that I considered my Holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, which all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

in a private letter to Baronness Burdett-Coutts on 4 October 1857

God

“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 book Side Effects

Side Effects (1980), My Apology

“The Prophet said, "He who has a slave-girl and teaches her good manners and improves her education and then manumits and marries her, will get a double reward; and any slave who observes Allah's right and his master's right will get a double reward."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Abu Musa Al-Ashari, in Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 46, Number 723
Sunni Hadith

Education, Girl

“Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.”

Lynne Cheney (1941) Second Lady of the United States 2001–2009, writer and pundit

"The Truth & Lynne Cheney" http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IUK/is_2001_Spring/ai_75453032/pg_1, interview, Women's Quarterly (Spring 2001).

Family, Girl, Boy, Nature