Quotes about observation (2323 quotes, page 9)

“This appearance of the Evening was… just after a very heavy rain — more rain in the night and very — [? light] wind which continued all the — day following while making – this sketch observed the Moon easing – very beautifully… [in the] due East over the — heavy clouds from which the late showers – had fallen.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Inscription: 12 September, 1821, written on the back of 'Hampstead Heath, Sun setting over Harrow,' his sketch in oil on paper; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London. 1993), p. 221
1820s

Light , Appearance , Night

“Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.”

Niccolo Machiavelli Florentine Histories

Book V, Chapter 1 http://www.readprint.com/chapter-7136/Niccolo-Machiavelli
Florentine Histories (1526)

Peace , Spring , Nature , Evil

“The essence of the Vedas is a narrative on who the experiencing self is. Ordinary science informs us of the relationships between objects and also their transformations. But the Vedas say that this ordinary science leaves out the self who observes these objects.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

Interview The Hindu, 2014
Miscellaneous

Science

“The moment I am aware that I am aware, I am not aware. Awareness means the observer is not.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

7th Public Discussion, Saanen, Switzerland (10 August 1971)
1970s

“Of the three great skeptics I interviewed, Popper was the first to make his mark. His philosophy stemmed from his effort to distinguish pseudoscience, such as Marxism or astrology or Freudian psychology, from genuine science, such as Einstein's theory of relativity. The latter, Popper decided, was testable; it made predictions about the world that could be empirically checked. The logical positivists had said as much. But Popper denied the positivist assertion that scientists can prove a theory through induction, or repeated empirical tests or observations. One never knows if one's observations have been sufficient; the next observation might contradict all that preceded it. Observations can never prove a theory but can only disprove, or falsify it. Popper often bragged that he had "killed" logical positivism with this argument.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 27

World , Effort , Science

“The self-awareness that grows out of the habit of witnessing is nonjudgmental. I look at my actions, my feelings, my experience with soft and compassionate eyes, from a great distance as if I were God or a novelist. The chief rule of the witness is: Judge not. Do not identify with or against anything you observe. The witness must be amoral, a pure phenomenologist. The courtroom of civil conscience must be closed for a time. There is a time when the outlaw switches from contemplation to trans-moral action. But in order to stop the reactionary patterns of thought and behavior that make up the personality, there must be a prior time of inaction. As I gain skill as an objective and compassionate witness, my identity gradually shifts from my persona to my self. In place of the old compulsive, preprogrammed reactions, I find a growing ability to pause between the stimulus and the response. I cease being merely a biological creature who reacts automatically to steak and potatoes, the lure of immediate sex, or the invasion of my territory; I deliberate and choose what is most desirable. I am no longer captive either to my impulses or to the judgments made upon me by my society. In the newfound silence, I find the freedom to disengage from my old self-images and addictions.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 137

God , Sex , Behavior , Feeling

“Aristocrats might shrug, but commoners, dreading any collapse of the social order, wanted the rules of behavior to be observed.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, The Emperor and the Maula (2007), p. 443

Behavior

“"Naturally," observed Nikolai Petrovich, "you were born here, so everything is bound to strike you with a special —""Really, Daddy, it makes absolutely no difference where a person is born.""Still —""No, it makes no difference at all."”

Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) Russian writer

Source: Father and Sons (1862), Ch. 3.

Nature , Personality

“It is known to all persons who are conversant in experimental philosophy, that there are many little attentions and precautions necessary to be observed in the conducting of experiments, which cannot well be described in words, but which it is needless to describe, since practice will necessarily suggest them; though, like all other arts in which the hands and fingers are made use of, it is only much practice that can enable a person to go through complex experiments, of this or any kind, with ease and readiness.”

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) English theologian, chemist, educator, and political theorist

Experiments and Observations of Different Kinds of Air (1775)

Art , Personality

“To this old song:
Partridge lost his quill,
there's no harm won't befall him.

Partridge, whose winged fancy
aspired to a high estate,
lost a feather in his flight
and won the pen of despondency.
He finds in the breeze no buoyancy
for his pennants to haul him:
there's no harm won't befall him.

He wished to soar to a high tower
but found his plumage clipped,
and, observing himself plucked,
pines away in despair.
If he cries out for succor,
stoke the fire to forestall him:
there's no harm won't befall him.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Perdigão perdeu a pena
Não há mal que lhe não venha.Perdigão que o pensamento
Subiu a um alto lugar,
Perde a pena do voar,
Ganha a pena do tormento.
Não tem no ar nem no vento
Asas com que se sustenha:
Não há mal que lhe não venha.Quis voar a üa alta torre,
Mas achou-se desasado;
E, vendo-se depenado,
De puro penado morre.
Se a queixumes se socorre,
Lança no fogo mais lenha:
Não há mal que lhe não venha.
"Perdigão que o pensamento", tr. Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 251
Listen to the poem in Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4_2W-ZwV8&feature=youtu.be&t=10m31s
Lyric poetry, Songs (redondilhas)

Despair

“If you can’t think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn’t scientific.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 138

Thinking

“The population of Belgium…behaved in a diabolical, not to say bestial, manner, not one iota better than the Cossacks. They tortured the wounded, beat them to death, killed doctors and medical orderlies, fired secretly…on men harmlessly standing in the street - in fact by prearranged signal, under leadership…The King of the Belgians has to be notified at once that since his people have placed themselves outside all observance of European customs - from the frontier on, in all the villages, not only in Liege - they will be treated accordingly. Conditions for Belgium will become immensely more difficult.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Marginal note written on a message from the Belgian government (9 August 1914), quoted in John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 18-19
1910s

Death , Men , People

“He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoghts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Love , World , Time , Reading

“I would like to comment briefly on Professor Zadeh's presentation. His proposals could be severely, ferociously, even brutally criticized from a technical point of view. This would be out of place here. But a blunt question remains: Is professor Zadeh presenting important ideas or is he indulging in wishful thinking? No doubt Professor Zadeh's enthusiasm for fuzziness has been reinforced by the prevailing climate in the U. S.-one of unprecedented permissiveness. 'Fuzzification, is a kind of scientific permissiveness; it tends to result in socially appealing slogans unaccompanied by the discipline of hard scientific work and patient observation.”

Rudolf E. Kálmán (1930–2016) Hungarian-born American electrical engineer

Rudolf E. Kálmán (1972), cited in: Lotfi A. Zadeh " My life and work - a retrospective http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/papers/Preface%20ACM-My%20Life%20and%20Work--A%20Retrospective%20View.pdf" in: Appl. Comput. Math., V.10, N.1, Special Issue, 2011, p. 4-9

Idea , Question , Thinking

“We insist that our concept of perspective is the total antitheses of all static perspective. It is dynamic and chaotic in application, producing in the mind of the observer a veritable mass of plastic emotions.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

this quote of Carrá attacks one of the core principles of Cubism
1910's
Source: 'Piani plastici come espanzione sferica nello spazio', Carrà, March 1913

“There was no room in him for curiosity; The capacity for observation had long since starved on the aridness of his soul.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 22 (p. 303)

Soul

“I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. The similarity of the two disciplines struck me at once. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our textbooks and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my 'deductions' were futile…
Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem — how we think… And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey's notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination—they don't think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorists had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject—the orthodox types particularly — when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem…
Of course Veblen fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side… There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises…
William Hill set me a course paper on 'Wool Growing and the Tariff.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new sidelight on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data... That was my first 'investigation'.
Wesley Clair Mitchell in letter to John Maurice Clark, August 9, 1928. Originally printed in Methods in Social Science, ed. Stuart Rice; Cited in: Arthur F. Burns (1965, 65-66)

Way , Behavior , Game , Idea

“… any one who has noticed may have observed that the weeping of grown up persons produces a sensation of awe on the mind of a child. Accustomed to associate the idea of superiority with that of their elders, they cannot understand their giving way to the same emotions as themselves.”

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

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Way , Idea , Understanding , Personality

“England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813)
1810s

Law , Idea , Personality , Country

“I may observe by the way that this book cured me of my sectarian follies. The two or three pages beginning "Il regardait toute secte comme nuisible," and explaining why Turgot always kept himself perfectly distinct from the Encyclopedists, sank deeply into my mind. I left off designating myself and others as Utilitarians, and by the pronoun "we" or any other collective designation, I ceased to affiche, sectarianism. My real inward sectarianism I did not get rid of till later, and much more gradually.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Books , Way

“At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.”

Val Logsdon Fitch (1923–2015) American physicist

Nobel Prize Autobiography (1981).

Nature , Time

“Putting a shovel in a gallery or museum signified “this shovel has become art.” And it actually was. The action itself is art, because the artist projects himself in choosing the shovel, and especially in placing it out of context. It is art in the sense that the imprint of a hand in a cave is art, the Mona Lisa is art, a happening is art, etc. It is a problem that touches on the ethics and function of the artist: he assumes the right to have this supra-human calling that allows him to say to others, “everything that I touch with my hand is transformed into art.” The artist imposes his anguish, his vision of the world, and himself on others. The artist emasculates the observer. Maybe he thinks that the latter deserves no better… The artist assumes the right to show you what you can see for yourself, what you could obviously see much more clearly without his intervention. I contest this right.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

Source: Art is no longer justifiable or setting the record straight, 2000, p. 66-67

World , Art , Problem , Thinking

“It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

As quoted in "Annals of Science II-DNA" by Horace Freeland Judson in The New Yorker (4 December 1978), p. 132

Confidence

“Where once there was an understanding that a reality independent of the human observer exists; students are now taught that truth is a social construction, a function of the power and position—or lack thereof—of persons or groups in society.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Faking History To Make The Black Kids Feel Good" http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/16/faking-history-to-make-the-black-kids-feel-good/ The Daily Caller, January 13, 2017
2010s, 2017

Truth , Understanding , Reality , Personality

“I fell into conversation with Douglas. His is a split personality. À deux he is delightful; clever, funny, observant, drily cynical. But get him anywhere near "display mode", particularly if there are officials around, and he might as well have a corncob up his arse. Pompous, trite, high-sounding, cautiously guarded.”

Alan Clark (1928–1999) British politician

January 29, 1988; page 198.
Diaries: In Power (1993)

Personality

“He had come to power because he had seen through Hitler from the very beginning- but not, ironically, because his inner light, the source of that insight, was understood by Englishmen. Churchill's star was invisible to the public and even to most of his peers. But a few saw it. One of them wrote afterward that although Winston knew the world was complex and in constant flux, to him "the great things, races, and peoples, and morality were eternal." Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher, later observed that the Churchill of 1940 was neither "a sensitive lens, which absorbs and concentrates and reflects… the sentiments of others," nor a politician who played "on public opinion like an instrument." Instead Berlin saw him as a leader who imposed his "imagination and his will upon his countrymen," idealizing them "with such intensity that in the end they approached his ideal and began to see themselves as he saw them."”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

In doing so he "transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armour."
Source: 1980s, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 687

Men , People , World , Imagination

“Since, though I do not repent my amorous exploits, I am far from wanting my example to contribute to the corruption of the fair sex, which deserves our homage for so many reasons, I hope that my observations will foster prudence in fathers and mothers and thus at least deserve their esteem.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 4, p. 110
Referenced

Hope , Sex

“While many brilliant writers and speech makers have been battling passionately about communism, fascism, socialism, and democracy, our studies of how governmental organizations actually function have forced us to the conclusion that there is little significance to these terms. Indeed, it has been our general observation that not only in different countries, but from generation to generation men go on organizing their governments and earning their living in much the same manner. Notable changes and improvements can be credited from time to time to the scientists and engineers, and in general to improved technology, but throughout history economic laws and the processes of production and distribution display an utter contempt for changes in the political complexion of government. In appraising the many experiments in governmental organization that are being tried currently throughout the world, it is important that we should not be thrown off the track by the circumstance that the various revolutionary movements or changes in government have adopted different symbols around which to rally supporters. The vital point is the plain fact that, once the controlling group gets into power, the practical circumstances of the situation force the new leaders to organize the government according to principles of organization that are as old as the hills.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 14-15; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 251-252 ; Parts published earlier in: News and Views. General Motors Acceptance Corporation, General Exchange Insurance Corporation, Motors Insurance Corporation, 1938. p. 8

Men , World , Law , Democracy

“Science looks and observes and art see and foresees. Every great scientist has experienced a moment when the artist in him saved the scientist.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Naum Gabo (1937) "Editorial", p. 9
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Art , Science

“A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole.”

Virginia Satir (1916–1988) American psychologist

Conjoint Family Therapy: A Guide to theory and technique (1967)

Family

“[E]ducation in a democracy, in our democracy, must use all the instruments of civilization, home, church, community, as well as school, for the adequate, suitable development of each child. This means that character and imagination, as well as heart and hand, are developed together.
Education in a democracy must consciously direct reading and observation, principle and practice to the happiness, the responsibilities, and the participation of group living. Government in a democracy is not “they,” it is “us.””

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Speech given to the Unitarian Radio Hour, reprinted in [McKanan, Dan, A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism, Volume Two: From 1900 to the Present, https://books.google.com/books?id=4FBUDwAAQBAJ, 3 July 2018, 2017, Skinner House Books, 978-1-55896-791-5, 105-7]

Education , School , Democracy , Home

“When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun fire—one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men’s welfare.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Men , People , Motivation , Effort

“They drew near, and observing that they were very comfortable standing before the warm fire, they put on logs and, while thus keeping it alive, brought up other people to it, showing them by signs how much comfort they got from it. In that gathering of men, at a time when utterance of sound was purely individual, from daily habits they fixed upon articulate words just as these had happened to come; then, from indicating by name things in common use, the result was that in this chance way they began to talk, and thus originated conversation with one another.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I "The Origin of the Dwelling House" Sec. 1

Men , People , Way , Chance

“Perhaps the House will allow me to add this: that I am afraid we must brace ourselves to confront one of those terrible events in the order of Providence which baffle foresight, which appall the imagination and make us realise the inadequacy of words to do justice to what we feel. We cannot say more at this moment than to give a necessarily imperfect impression of our sense of admiration that the best traditions of the sea seem to have been observed and that willing sacrifices were offered to give the first chance for safety to those who were least able to help themselves, and of the heartfelt sympathy of the whole nation to those who find themselves suddenly bereaved of their nearest and dearest.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the House of Commons on the sinking of the RMS Titanic; see [Asquith Voices Sympathy, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A02E3DF153CE633A25754C1A9629C946396D6CF, 16 April 1912, The New York Times]

Justice , Feeling , Imagination , Sense

“We have observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is a sign on the door of our face that says 'Herein dwells a man who is intelligent, prudent, courteous, affable, noble-minded and generous'. A small nose is a cork on the bottle of the opposite vices.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Intelligence

“Because information is often biased, outdated, or inadequate, command-based systems rely on obtuse information to produce blunt solutions. Wielding force like drunken revelers, political systems gamble on the singularity of direction to fix a multiplicity of problems, woefully ignorant that one size does not fit all. Blinded by political ideologies, they rarely act to solve underlying problems. Karl Hess (1923-1994), a former presidential speech writer, noted this condition, observing, ‘Politicians occasionally do the right thing—but only after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 17

Problem

“Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source.”

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) French composer and music theorist of the Baroque era

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1726). Nouveau système de musique théorique, p. 59. Paris.

Nature , Perfection

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Pleasure , Dreams , Hope , Way

“A fundamental requirement of a Foreign Service Officer is that he or she report on a given situation as observed or understood. It is only in this way that any government can draw conclusions knowledgeably and make its considered decisions, even if at variance with the reports received.”

Jacques Roy (diplomat) Canadian diplomat

Way , Knowledge , Decision , Drawing

“Your case has been reviewed by high-minded
and unprejudiced observers (like hell
they were!) the president of a great
university, the president of a noteworthy
technical school and a judge too old to sit
on the bench, men already rewarded for
their services to pedagogy and the enforcement
of arbitrary statutes. In other words
pimps to tradition”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"Impromptu: The Suckers"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

Men , School , Hell , Universe

“Although all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius, yet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees distant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad, just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others. A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), II. On Difference of Character

Truth , Intelligence , Nature , Thinking

“17. Wednesday. A fine morning. Proceeded on my journey towards Braintree. Stopped to see Mr. Haven, of Dedham, who told me, very civilly, he supposed I took my faith on trust from Dr. Mayhew, and added, that he believed the doctrine of satisfaction of Jesus Christ to be essential to Christianity, and that he would not believe this satisfaction unless he believed the Divinity of Christ. Mr. Balch was there too, and observed, he would not be a Christian if he did not believe mysteries of the gospel; that he could bear with an Arminian, but when, Dr. Mayhew they denied the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ, he had no more to do with them; that he knew to make of Dr. Mayhew's two discourses upon the expected of all things. They gave him an idea of a cart whose wanted greasing; it rumbled on in a hoarse, rough manner; there was a good deal of ingenious talk in them, but it was thrown together in a jumbled, confused order. He believed the Doctor wrote them in a great panic. He added further that Arminians, however stiffly they maintain their opinions in health, always, he takes notice, retract when they come to die, and choose to die Calvinists. Set out for Braintree, and arrived about sunset.”

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

Entry for 17 February 1756 in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams vol. 2, 10-1
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Health , Faith , Idea , Christ

“I am pervaded by the marvel of this art; but I cannot as yet explain it to myself. The Gothic is the world foreshortened. Where am I to begin? For more than thirty years I have been accumulating and comparing my observations. Perhaps eventually I shall succeed in deducing the rule, the law of divine intelligence; but perhaps I shall not have sufficient time. Then it will be the task of another, younger than myself, who will start his researches earlier, and who, besides, will have been informed by me.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 183; Rodin talks about cathedrals

World , Law , Art , Intelligence

“When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius, in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet's Madness.)”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 304
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Soul , Madness

“The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.”

Charles Dickens book Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 23

“Geometry is that of mathematical science which is devoted to consideration of form and size, and may be said to be the best and surest guide to study of all sciences in which ideas of dimension or space are involved. Almost all the knowledge required by navigators, architects, surveyors, engineers, and opticians, in their respective occupations, is deduced from geometry and branches of mathematics. All works of art constructed according to the rules which geometry involves; and we find the same laws observed in the works of nature. The study of mathematics, generally, is also of great importance in cultivating habits of exact reasoning; and in this respect it forms a useful auxiliary to logic.”

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

Robert Chambers, Chambers's Information for the People (1875) Vol. 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=vNpTAAAAYAAJ

Law , Art , Mathematics , Idea

“In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 4.11
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“I had tasted the bait and knew that there was nothing more attractive and more subtle on earth than the Game. I had also observed fairly early that this enchanting Game demanded more than naive amateur players, that it took total possession of the man who had succumbed to its magic. And an instinct within me rebelled against my throwing all my energies and interests into this magic forever. Some naive feeling for simplicity, for wholeness and soundness, warned me against the spirit of the Waldzell Vicus Lusorum. I sensed in it a spirit of specialism and virtuosity, certainly highly cultivated, certainly richly elaborated, but nevertheless isolated from humanity and the whole of life — a spirit that had soared too high into haughty solitariness. For years I doubted and probed, until the decision had matured within me and in spite of everything I decided in favor of the Game. I did so because I had within me that urge to seek the supreme fulfillment and serve only the greatest master.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Life , Feeling , Game , Decision

“It was always something of a puzzle to observers of Australia to explain the high standing of working men and the prevalence of their values in the culture. The easy answer was to say the middle-class was numerically weak. But in a capitalist society their values should be predominant whatever their numbers. So was it that they lacked the will to rule? I have suggested here that convict origins help to explain this puzzle. The bourgeoisie, sharing the shame of the nation, looked for respectability through White Australia and military prowess, and the forms these took had a strong proletarian cast; the working man was elevated by one and was the most notable embodiment of the other.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

"An Oddity from the Start" https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2008/july/1277335186/john-hirst/oddity-start, The Monthly, July 2008.

Men , Strong , Help

“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 7
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Nature , Knowledge

“Once we recognize that all historical knowledge is relational knowledge, and can only be formulated with reference to the position of the observer, we are faced, once more, with the task of discriminating between what is true and what is false in such knowledge.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Knowledge , Falseness

“With the opportunity to observe the problems of the President at closer range, I have come to understand the importance of an intimate, easy relationship, born of friendship and mutual regard, between the President and the Chiefs. It is particularly important in the case of the Chairman, who works more closely with the President and Secretary of Defense than do the service chiefs. The Chairman should be a true believer in the foreign policy and military strategy of the administration he serves, or, at least, feel that he and his colleagues are assured an attentive hearing those matters for which the Joint Chiefs have a responsibility. These considerations have led me to conclude that an incoming President is well advised to change the Chiefs, not with one sweep of the new broom, but progressively as he gets a chance to know the senior officers qualified for consideration and to evaluate their compatibility with his ways of thinking and acting.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 252

Friendship , Way , Feeling , Understanding

“My observation of the flight of buzzards leads me to believe that they regain their lateral balance when partly overturned by a gust of wind, by a torsion of the tips of the wings. If the rear edge of the right wing tip is twisted upward and the left downward the bird becomes an animated windmill and instantly begins to turn, a line from its head to its tail being the axis. It thus regains its level even if thrown on its beam’s end, so to speak, as I have frequently seen them. I think the bird also in general retains its lateral equilibrium, partly by presenting its two wings at different angles to the wind, and partly by drawing in one wing, thus reducing its area. I incline to the belief that the first is the more important and usual method….
My business requires that my experimental work be confined to the months between September and January and I would be particularly thankful for advice as to a suitable locality where I could depend on winds of about 15 miles per hour without rain or too inclement weather. I am certain that such localities are rare.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Letter to Octave Chanute (13 May 1900)

Business , Bird , Thinking , Animals

“The mysterious musicality, the organic intermarriage of its forms convex and concave, the high singing phrase of a straight line bordering a plane and its sudden dropping into a scarcely traceable curve, and feel deeply, sharply, the profound peace, the philosophy awakened by the even distribution of light and shade, wandering from one curved plane into a deep clarity of light, enriching a carefully carved stone plane. One will understand at once that those awakened sensation have nothing to do with anatomical considerations, exactitudes observed or not.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Peace , Music , Feeling , Understanding

“Now - how can we possibly examine something we use all the time and presuppose in every statement? How can we criticize the terms in which we habitually express our observations? Let us see! The first step in our criticism of commonly-used concepts is to create a measure of criticism, something with which these concepts can be compared. Of course, we shall later want to know a little more about the measuring stick itself; for example, we shall want to know whether it is better than, or perhaps not as good as, the material examined. But in order for this examination to start there must be a measuring-stick in the first place. Therefore, the first step in our criticism of customary concepts and customary reactions is to step outside the circle and either to invent a new conceptual system, for example a new theory, that clashes with the most carefully established observational results and confounds with the most plausible theoretical principles, or to import such a system from outside science, from religion, from mythology, from the ideas of incompetents, or the ramblings of madmen. This step is, again, counter-inductive, Counter-induction is thus both a fact”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

science could not exist without it - and a legitimate and much needed move in the game of science.
Pg 68.
Against Method (1975)

Religion , Game , Idea , Science

“On a novel plan, I have combined the historical progress with the scientific developement of the subject; and endeavoured to lay down and inculcate the principles of the Calculus, whilst I traced its gradual and successive improvements…. there is little doubt, the student's curiosity and attention will be more excited and sustained, when he finds history blended with science, and the demonstration of formulae accompanied with the object and the causes of their invention, than by a mere analytical exposition of the principles of the subject. He will have an opportunity of observing how a calculus, from simple beginnings, by easy steps, and seemingly the slightest improvements, is advanced to perfection; his curiosity too, may be stimulated to an examination of the works of the contemporaries of Newton; works once read and celebrated: yet the writings of the Bernoullis are not antiquated from loss of beauty, nor deserve neglect…”

Robert Woodhouse (1773–1827) English mathematician

Preface p. iv-v
A Treatise on Isoperimetrical Problems, and the Calculus of Variations (1810)

Beauty , History , Science , Loss

“I am constantly observing my actions, words, and behaviors while processing what my being white has done to affect certain responses and outcomes. The same is true of observing how others interact with me. How does my being white affect what they say and do to me, and how they behave around me?It is an important part of my commitment to actively dismantle the white skin privilege that persists in America today. While I remain much invested in the ongoing work of deconstructing institutional injustice and systemic racism, I am also committed to being hyper-aware of and hyper-sensitive to how I am manifesting and/or receiving privilege. I believe justice requires both. I also believe I can't condition myself to see or to rebel against institutional privilege if I can't first see them in myself.”

John C. Dorhauer

"Checking my Privilege," UCC News, August 4, 2016 http://www.ucc.org/commentary_checking_my_privilege_08042016#.V6gGJL2sepA.facebook

Justice , Behavior , Parting

“It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Death
Essays (1625)

Love , Death , Fear , Revenge

“The following Treatise… has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios… the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit…”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.3
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Science

“Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Sermon on the Apostles' Creed, 13-14

God , World , Beauty , Feeling

“Man is usually not content simply to register the observables that surround him; he needs to refer them as far as possible to the invariances of his environment.. The underlying causes of events, especially the motives of other persons, are the invariances of the environment that are relevant to him; they give meaning to what he experiences and it is these meanings that are recorded in his life space and are precipitated as the reality of the environment to which he then reacts.”

Fritz Heider (1896–1988) German psychologist

Source: The psychology of interpersonal relations, 1958, p. 81

Life , Motivation , Reality , Personality

“It is not uncommon for intelligent adults to turn into passive observers of their own incompetence in anything but the most elementary mathematics. Individuals may see the direct consequences of this intellectual paralysis in terms of limiting job possibilities. But the indirect, secondary consequences are even more serious. One of the main lessons learned by most people in math class is a sense of having rigid limitations. They learn a balkanized image of human knowledge which they come to see as a patchwork of territories separated by impassable iron curtains.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

People , Intelligence , Mathematics , Knowledge

“I swear that I will invest all my efforts in the preservation of sovereignty and integrity of the territory of the Republic of Serbia, including Kosovo and Metohija as its integral part, as well as the realization of human and minority rights and freedoms, observation and defense of the Constitution and laws, preservation of peace and welfare of all Serbian citizens and that I will fulfill all my duties conscientiously and responsibly.”

Boris Tadić (1958) Serbian politician, President of Serbia 2004–2012

Tadić položio zakletvu, B92, 2008-02-15, 2008-02-16, Serbian http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=02&dd=15&nav_category=11&nav_id=285045,.

Peace , Law , Effort , Freedom

“After Ashoka's lavish sponsorship of Buddhism, it is perfectly possible that Buddhist institutions fell on slightly harder times under the Sungas, but persecution is quite another matter. The famous historian of Buddhism Etienne Lamotte has observed: "To judge from the documents, Pushyamitra must be acquitted through lack of proof."…The only reason to sustain the suspicion against Pushyamitra, once it has been levelled, is that "where there is smoke, there must be fire"”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

but that piece of received wisdom is presupposed in every act of slander as well.
E. Lamotte: History of Indian Buddhism, Institut Orientaliste, Louvain-la-Neuve 1988 (1958), quoted in Elst, K. (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism.

Wisdom , Time

“Observations interpreted by reason. Few, if any, ideas have had such impact on the lives of men.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 9 (p. 139)

Men , Idea

“Since the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence, it is worth observing that, rightly considered, the probability should surely be the other way. For the adaptations relate to every variety of exigency. To supply themselves with food, to find it, to seize and digest it, to protect themselves from predatory enemies whether by offence or defence, to counter-balance the changes of temperature, or pressure, to provide for mechanical strains, to obtain immunity from poison and from invading organisms, to bring the sexual elements into contact, to ensure the distribution of the type; all these and many more are accomplished by organisms in a thousand most diverse and alternative methods. Those are the things that are hard to imagine as produced by any concatenation of natural events; but the suggestions that organisms had had from the beginning innate in them a power of modifying themselves, their organs and their instincts so as to meet these multifarious requirements does not materially differ from the more overt appeals to supernatural intervention. The conception, originally introduced by Hering and independently by S. Butler, that adaptation is a consequence or product of accumulated memory was of late revived by Semon and has been received with some approval, especially by F. Darwin. I see nothing fantastic in the notion that memory may be unconsciously preserved with the same continuity that the protoplasmic basis of life possesses. That idea, though purely speculative and, as yet, incapable of proof or disproof contains nothing which our experience of matter or of life at all refutes. On the contrary, we probably do well to retain the suggestion as a clue that may some day be of service. But if adaptation is to be the product of these accumulated experiences, they must in some way be translated into terms of physiological and structural change, a process frankly inconceivable.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 190

Life , Food , Way , Imagination

“The Christian movement began with John the Baptist. … in his recorded teaching to the people there is not a word about the customary ritual of religion, about increased Sabbath observance, about stricter washings and sacrifices, or the ordinary exercises of piety. He spoke only of repentance, of ceasing from wrongdoing. He hailed the professional exponents of religion who came to hear him, as a brood of snakes wriggling away from the flames of the judgment. …The way to prepare for the Messianic era and to escape the wrath of the Messiah was to institute a brotherly life and to equalize social inequalities.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 49-50

Life , People , Religion , Way

“It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Statement of mid-1920's; as quoted in Abstract Art (1990) by Anna Moszynska, p. 100
1921 - 1930

“How scientists go about their job: and it's a process, it's a question of asking questions, respecting observation, respecting experiment, having tentative explanations and then testing them…. There is a problem sometimes with how we teach science at schools. Because we sometimes teach it as if it has been chiseled in stone.”

Paul Nurse (1949) Nobel prize winning British biochemist

in Charlie Rose Science Series: The Imperative of Science http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9027 with Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bruce Alberts, Editor-In-Chief of Science and Lisa Randall of Harvard University.

School , Question , Problem , Science

“It is a strong argument for democracy that governments regulated by principles of accountability, respect for public opinion and the supremacy of just laws are more likely than an all-powerful ruler or ruling class, uninhibited by the need to honour the will of the people, to observe the traditional duties of Buddhist kingship. Traditional values serve both to justify and to decipher popular expectations of democratic government.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

People , Law , Democracy , Strong

“As systematic inquiry into the natural facts was begun it was at once found that the accepted ideas of variation were unfounded. Variation was seen very frequently to be a definite and specific phenomenon, affecting different forms of life in different ways, but in all its diversity showing manifold and often obvious indications of regularity. This observation was not in its essence novel. Several examples of definite variation had been well known to Darwin and others, but many, especially Darwin himself in his later years, had nevertheless been disposed to depreciate the significance of such facts. They consequently then lapsed into general disparagement. Upon more careful inquiry the abundance of such phenomena proved to be far greater than was currently supposed, and a discussion of their nature brought into prominence a consideration of greater weight, namely that the differences by which these definite or discontinuous variations are constituted again and again approximate to and are comparable with the class of differences by which species are distinguished from each other.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Preface
Problems In Genetics (1913)

Life , Way , Idea , Nature

“You don't observe the past directly, even when you think about the creation account. We can't observe God creating, we can't observe Adam and Eve: we admit that. We're willing to admit our beliefs about the past. But see, what you observe in the present is very different. Even some public school textbooks sort of acknowledge the difference between historical and observational science.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

God , School , Thinking , Science

“This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“The Dwarf,” p. 92
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Game”

World

“Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie.”

Anton Chekhov book The Letter

The Letter (1887)

Lie , Feeling , Business , Effort

“.. women… …their way of observing, combining, sensing the way they dress. They compare a thousand of more visible things with one another than a man does.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 53
quotes, undated

Women , Way , Sense

“Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad’, said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe’s hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

World , Justice , Understanding , Thinking

“The starting point is that one is interested in the universe, one observes that one is finite and that this is intolerable. One has a limited time and apparently limited capacity with which to find anything out. Therefore it is possible to despair. There are many orders of despair, and none of them are known to normal psychology. This is demonstrated by the fact that it has not become existential. Normal psychology will never devalue anything. Existential psychology, at least to a certain point, consists of exploiting the recoil from the despair of finiteness. The recoil is a drive with at least the instinctive immediacy of the survival instinct. There is no point in saying, 'What is there to do? What could such a drive possibly tend towards?”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The survival instinct tends to prolong life. The fundamental drive tends to inform itself about the universe.
Advice to Clever Children (1981)

Life , Universe , Time , Despair

“There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A. B. C. may read our natures.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 2
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Soul , Nature , Reading

“Our brains have evolved mainly to deal with our body and its interactions with the world it senses to be around us. Is this world real? This is a venerable philosophical issue and I do not wish to be embroiled in the finely honed squabbles to which it has led. I merely state my own working hypothesis: that there is indeed an outside world, and that it is largely independent of our observing it. We can never fully know this outside world, but we can obtain approximate information about some aspects of its properties by using our senses and our brain.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

World , Sense

“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia… Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978), p. 15

Behavior , History , Birth , Learning

“We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 14
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

Men , Sex , Exercises , Fashion

“For the student of visionary art the interesting fact is that an image comes first and takes up residence in the mind long before the artist has any notion why it is there or what it means. Whether visions come from some great reservoir of symbolic images which are eternally there (and if one examines the recurrence of images in history this proposition is not quite as crazy as it sounds) or whether they are due to buried memories, their obsessive power over an artist's mind, and their clear, compulsive emergence in his work depends on a mental condition that can come and go. When, for some reason, they no longer present themselves to the mind's eye, alive or clamoring to be born, the visionary artist has a hard time — dark days. This is particularly true if he has lost the habit of feeding his mind on the observation of nature.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 6: Blake

Art , History , Nature , Memory

“‘It was reported to the Emperor (Aurangzeb) that in the Temple of Keshava Rai at Mathura, there was a stone railing presented by ‘Bishukoh’ (one without dignity i. e. Prince Dara, Aurangzeb’s elder brother). On hearing it, the Emperor observed, “In the religion of the Musalmans, it is improper even to look at a Temple and this Bishukoh had installed this kathra (barrier railing). Such an act is totally unbecoming of a Musalman. This railing should be removed (forthwith).””

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Umurat-i-Hazur Kishwar-Kashai, Julus (R.Yr.) 9, Rabi II 24 / 13 October 1666.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1660s

Religion

“Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism. … It is the Fashion to be a wit. … one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"The Comedies of William Congreve" in William and Mary College Monthly (September 1897), V, p. 41, as quoted in "James Branch Cabell at William and Mary: the Education of a Novelist," by William L. Godshalk in The William and Mary Review, 5 (1967); reprinted in Kalki, Vol II, No.4, Whole No.8 (1968) http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/kalki_archives/kalki_from.html

Men , Fashion

“I have very strongly of late the wish that others may be as sensitive as myself and the fear that they will not be. Colleague Sir Frank Adcock stumped by the sunset-portent unheeding. And I can't arge that I gain, or that others would gain, anything for humanity by observing and recording what went on for a few moments in the sky on Boar Race evening. I sometimes pretend to myself that I am public-spirited. I am not. I am an hedonist who wants pleasant sensations. On the other hand I am not the usual type of hedonist, for I want sensations to be had”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

if not by myself, then by someone else. The show shouldn't end with my death, which becomes a minor boo-hoo.

p. 211 (1959)
Commonplace Book (1985)

Death , Fear

“When you have arrived at your country house and have saluted your household, you should make the rounds of the farm the same day, if possible; if not, then certainly the next day. When you have observed how the field work has progressed, what things have been done, and what remains undone, you should summon your overseer the next day, and should call for a report of what work has been done in good season and why it has not been possible to complete the rest, and what wine and corn and other crops have been gathered.”

Cato the Elder book De Agri Cultura

Of the duties of the owner
De Agri Cultura, about 160 BC

Wine , Housing , Country , Season

“AND thus the Fourth Mode is a state of emptiness,
made one with God in bare love and in Divine Light,
free and empty of all the observances of love,
above actions, and enduring a pure and simple love,
which consumes and annihilates in itself the spirit of a man,
so that he forgets himself, and knows neither himself nor God,
nor any creature, nor aught else but Love alone,
which he tastes and feels and possesses in simple emptiness.
He feels himself one Breadth with Love, Which is measureless, comprehending all things,
and Itself for ever remaining incomprehensible.
He sees himself made one with the eternal Length,
which is immovable, without beginning or ending,
going before and following after all created things”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

Love , God , Feeling , Light

“We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it. … I have myself observed that in states of extreme fatigue, when I am really dangerously physically exhausted, I suddenly get absolute knowledge; …”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: On Divination and Synchronicity (1992), pp. 39-40

Knowledge , Light

“The experience or the vision is the artist’s counterpart to the scientific discovery of a principle or law. What the scientist does when he discovers a new law is to give a new ordering to observed facts. The artist is engaged in a similar task. He gives new meaning to our experience and organizes it in a different way due to his perception of subtler qualities in reality.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Law , Way , Reality

“Reason does not need thinking. If you observe yourself making a plan you will notice that having fixed the object, the facts just keep coming, linking up into a chain of proposed action. Awareness is experiencing from moment to moment. Reason acts quickly in awareness, a thousand times faster than thought, and you do not even notice it is operating.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Thinking , Time

“When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man’s passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted— as easily as his mood. Dorothea’s entrance was the freshness of morning.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World , Soul , Imagination , Mountain

“When war reaches such dimensions as to involve the whole nation, and when the people at its conclusion find they have gained nothing but only observe widespread calamity around them, they are inclined to become more sceptical and desire to investigate the foundations of the arguments which inspired their patriotism, inflamed their passions, and prepared them to offer the supreme sacrifice. They are curious to know why the ostensible objects for which they fought have none of them been attained, more especially if they are the victors.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

War , People , Passion

“Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e. g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Soul , Thinking , Reality , Appearance

“The judeo-Americans are notorious idiots, bellylanding in foolishness: look at Roosevelt, Otto Khan, Morgenthau, Filene, Barush, Rosenthal…Observe these cunts.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

75
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

“Kester wrote about people and since human nature doesn't change his observations hadn't dated.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal

People , Nature , Change

““Obviously, the Rraey have some way to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, where our ships are going to skip. How do they do that?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to,” I said.
“That’s exactly right. But they do anyway. So, quite obviously, our model of how skipping works is wrong. Theory gets thrown out the window when observation proves it isn’t so. The question now is what is really going on.””

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 224)

Way , Question , Thinking

“I am convinced, based on more than three decades of studying NRMs through participant-observation and through interviews with both members and ex-members, that these movements have unleashed social and psychological forces of truly awesome power. These forces have wreaked havoc in many lives - in both adults and in children. It is these social and psychological influence processes that the social scientist has both the right and the duty to try to understand, regardless of whether such understanding will ultimately prove helpful or harmful to the cause of religious liberty. … the real sociological issue ought not to be whether brainwashing ever occurs but rather whether it occurs frequently enough to be considered an important social problem.”

Benjamin Zablocki (1941) American sociologist

Benjamin Zablocki (1997) The Blacklisting of a Concept: The Strange History of the Brainwashing Conjecture in the Sociology of Religion. ( online http://www.apologeticsindex.org/z03.html)

Children , Understanding , Problem , Study

“First we notice an investigation which Prof. Planck of Berlin published in 1899. His aim was that it should fit the observed facts of radiation, and show why the energy of bodies was not wholly transformed into radiation. …his investigation seemed to show that continuity had to be given up, suggesting that in the last resort changes in the universe do not consist of continuous motions in space and time, but in some way are discontinuous.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Way , Universe , Change , Time

“[T]ruly grand and powerful theories […] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. […] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly.
"Mr. Sophia's Pony", p. 155
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Error , Failure , Sense

Quotes about observation page 9

Quotes about observation
page 9