Top 20 General Observation Quotes
#2. Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
John Berger
#3. The forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation; and nothing is more usual, from haste or a narrowness of mind, which sees not on all sides, than to commit mistakes in this particular.
David Hume
#4. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.*
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#5. 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.
H.L. Mencken
#7. In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.
Patrick White
#8. The first, or theoretic branch, that which explains the nature, production, and distribution of wealth, will be found to rest on a very few general propositions, which are the result of observation, or consciousness.
Nassau William Senior
#9. Their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them.
Jane Austen
#10. A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.
David Ogilvy
#11. It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry; the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.
Henri Poincare
#12. When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge.
Isaac Watts
#14. Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education!
Maria Montessori
#15. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#16. There are moments in history when men who are not necessarily fools or cowards behave as if they felt themselves conscientious executors named to administer some general heritage of cowardice and folly...
Edmond Taylor
#17. An aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general.
Stefan Kanfer
#18. General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
William Hazlitt
#19. It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general.
Charles Horton Cooley
#20. I'm just drawing it now. It's totally revolting. I'm sure you'll love it.
Eddie Campbell
