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Observation Quotes

Browse 1489 quotes about Observation.

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Observation Quotes

“The human experience can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all decisions are of the past, all decisions are about the future. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior. The character and quality of the images of the future which prevail in a society is therefore the most important clue to its overall dynamics.”

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Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“Satellite photography in the 1970's gave rise to the long-range weather forecast, a month at a time. This in turn gave rise to the observation that the long-range weather forecast was wrong most of the time. In turn, this gave rise to the dropping of the long-range weather forecast and to the admission that really accurate forecasting could only cover the next day or two, and not always then.”

LongTwoTurnsNextMonthsPhotographyWeatherObservationRangeAccurateNext DayDroppingAdmissionSatellitesForecastsForecasting
Author:Miles Kington
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“When it was suggested to Pasteur that many of his great achievements depended on luck, he replied - I'm sure with more than a little irritation - 'In the field of observation in science, fortune only favours the prepared mind.' It is not by chance that it is always the great scientists who have the luck.”

MindLittlesChanceFieldsAchievementScientistLuckFortunePreparedObservationFavourIrritationGreat AchievementGreat ScientistPasteur
Book:The Unnatural Nature of Science
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“In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.”

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Author:Galileo Galilei
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“Scientists construct facts by constantly making decisions about what they will consider significant, what experiments they should pursue, and how they will describe their observations.”

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Book:Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers
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“One of my first observations about New York that I was so fascinated with was that you'd be at a stoplight and you're with everybody; there's a homeless dude and some weird celebrity and a cop and someone who looks exactly like you. You're on foot and everyone is at street level and eye-to-eye. I think that's what's special about New York, because there's no hierarchy, there's no discrimination.”

ThinkingFirstsLooksEyeLevelsFeetStreetsSpecialNew YorkLike YouDiscriminationObservationFascinatedCopHomelessHierarchy
Author:Kevin Morby
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“Become better listeners. Practice the art of listening in everything you do. Not just listening to yourself and your body, but listening to the people around you, listening to the plant world, the animal world. Really open your ears to what's coming at you. From there, see if you can have the ability to respond instead of react. And that usually comes with listening. If the observation and the listening are deep, then your action will be deep also.”

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Author:Rodney Yee
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“That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.”

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Book:In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality
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“Most conservatives know better than to promote the state funding of art. The result of such funding is the mess that modern art has become. Atonal music is to music what subsidized art is to art. ...The fact that cacophony has reigned almost supreme since 1900 is a testimony to Mises' original observation. Atonal music is to music what socialism is to economics: planned chaos.”

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Author:Gary North
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“If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.”

IfsTogetherThreeSimpleGrowingEventsMajorsInnovationCrisisFinancialCurrentsSentencesDrivingIncomeObservationInequalityTiesOur TimeGoodsMechanismStagnationStagnantFinancial CrisisIncome InequalityOne SentenceMacroeconomicsMedian
Author:Tyler Cowen
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“Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.”

MenMindFirstsIdeasLastsSoundNaturalCommonDevelopmentCommon SenseObservationOpposingIlliterateObtaining
Book:The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer (illustrated)
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“I'm not very eloquent about things like this, but I think that writing and photography go together. I don't mean that they are related arts, because they're not. But the person doing it, I think, learns from both things about accuracy of the eye, about observation, and about sympathy toward what is in front of you... It's about honesty, or truth telling, and a way to find it in yourself, how to need it and learn from it.”

ThinkingWayNeedsWritingMeanPersonsArtEyeTogetherFrontsHonestyPhotographyArt IsObservationRelatedTelling The TruthAccuracyEloquent
Author:Eudora Welty
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“Literature especially has an interesting relationship to photography - to observation, to description, to fiction: taking something that you see and elaborating, jamming, and I think, staging.... taking that moment of observation and letting it go, giving it some wings, following it, rather than nailing it. You're riffing off of reality.”

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Author:Larry Sultan
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