Top 100 Observations The Quotes
#1. Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.
Erwin Schrodinger
#2. I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.
James Bryant Conant
#3. Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr. Hooke's Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.
Samuel Pepys
#4. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option.
Timothy McVeigh
#5. I've learned to put great store in my own observations of everyday life, because while laboratory experiments are one way to study human nature, they aren't the only way.
Gretchen Rubin
#6. But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.
Aimee Bender
#7. And yet Jane still couldn't help feeling sorry for the anticyclonic. That mutant left-handed runt of the liter... the poor damned giant evil beautiful thing...
Bruce Sterling
#8. The Tweets that I have written that are most popular are the ones that are the kind of universal girly concerns and observations.
Mindy Kaling
#9. Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Richard Hamming
#10. You wrong me, Madame Lefoux. I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone." The
Gail Carriger
#11. The point is that if the knowledge that provides the categories we use to describe our observations is defective, the observation statements that presuppose those categories are similarly defective.
Alan F. Chalmers
#12. The language of mathematics, scientific observations, and our perceptivity together knit the window to reality.
Neeti Sinha
#13. It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment
Francis Bacon
#14. The degree to which we notice the obvious or the subtle, and the angle of light that we see falling upon it, depends upon how closely we look and the time we spend studying.
Fennel Hudson
#15. It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.*
Terry Pratchett
#16. It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.
Michael Behe
#17. Science is a process for learning about nature in which competing ideas about how the world works are measured against observations.
Richard P. Feynman
#18. It is, in fact, a great mistake to think we must suppress observations of human differences if we are to do justice to human dignity. The dignity of the person is not touched by such observations, for the dignity of human beings as persons is not an object of observation but of recognition.
Robert Spaemann
#19. If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.
Jane Smiley
#20. You can't just be reactive to the things going on in your life. You have to imagine, and you have to plunder other people's work, books, poems, ideas, observations.
David Gray
#21. Trimming consists of clipping off little bits here and there from those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and in sticking them onto those which are too small; a species of 'equitable adjustment,' as a radical would term it, which cannot be admitted in science.
Charles Babbage
#22. He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working.
Robert M. Pirsig
#23. That's right, but it's not a mathematical proposition. It's a sociological observation
and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations. - Dr. Mandamus to Dr. Kelden Amadiro
Isaac Asimov
#24. But, after all, the sciences have made progress, because philosophers have applied themselves with more attention to observe, and have communicated to their language that precision and accuracy which they have employed in their observations: In correcting their language they reason better.
Etienne Bonnot De Condillac
#25. Cuvier had preceded Lamarck in specifying the kinds and degrees of variation, which his own observations and critical judgment of the reports of others led him to admit.
Richard Owen
#26. From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.
Samuel Johnson
#27. You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.
Victor Levin
#28. The curious defiled past him, after squeezing the Presidential fingers into the room, and settled either on the sofa or chairs or remained standing for protracted observations.
Henry Villard
#29. I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.
Brene Brown
#30. When, indeed, is a thing proven? Only
when an individual has accumulated in his own consciousness
enough observations, impressions, reasonings and feelings to
satisfy him personally that it is so. The same evidence which
convinces one expert may leave another completely unsatisfied.
Hugh Nibley
#31. Von Neumann makes two important observations here: acceleration and singularity. The first idea is that human progress is exponential (that is, it expands by repeatedly multiplying by a constant) rather than linear (that is, expanding by repeatedly adding a constant).
Ray Kurzweil
#32. A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
Karl Popper
#33. We develop our whole character from our thoughts, actions, attentive observations, and from the resolute pursuit of our inspirational dreams.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#34. Psychological observations of the prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influences.
Viktor E. Frankl
#35. Only listen to the observations of the enlightened because everyone else is self-centered, egocentric and bound by the net of desire.
Frederick Lenz
#36. Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.
James Randi
#37. I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill today from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the places, and mean to work hard again tonight.
Maria Mitchell
#38. Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context.
Craig Venter
#39. A scientist is only a human being, a particle in the whole universe. How can the observations and logic of a particle measure the life and size of a phenomenon that is limitless?
Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal
#40. We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even ... Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
Victor J. Stenger
#41. Evolution is a fact. It is the best explanation of what is known from observations. It's a theory as powerful as the theory of gravity.
Donald Johanson
#42. We refuse unfair offers because people who meekly accepted unfair offers didn't survive in the Stone Age. Observations
Yuval Noah Harari
#43. Here she barked out her greetings in Italian, anxious to disassociate herself from the horseless American cowboys and above all from her own kind, the truly lost and unwanted, who move like leaves around the edges of the world, gathering only long enough to wait in line and see if there is any mail
John Cheever
#44. I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations.
Lauren Oliver
#45. We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth.
Hippocrates
#46. The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
Virginia Woolf
#47. To appropriately respond to an emergency requires a very clear mind, to cooly analyze what the observations are and how to fix it.
Buzz Aldrin
#48. That became the signature Ice-T style - rhymes that were "topical" and "vividly optical." To me it was street-level journalism, real-life observations told in poetry. That's the vision I tried to bring to all my recordings.
Ice-T
#49. I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.
Charles Hard Townes
#50. Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell stories about them.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#51. It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
Edmund Burke
#52. If the subject is in a suffering circumstance, it is all the more preferable to apply craft to the utmost. Call it art or not, we photographers should always try to pass on our observations with the utmost clarity.
Dennis Stock
#53. Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.
Melina Marchetta
#54. The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy.
George Bernard Shaw
#56. It's ironic that people speak of artists as dreamers. I think they are the most grounded people around. Conscious and present. As an artist, you really see life, connect with its beauty, and create something that shares those observations with others. You notice things.
Danny Gregory
#57. Much of the irritation people feel at personal observations was usually because there was a grain of truth in them.
Lucinda Riley
#58. Space and time may have a structure as intricate as the fauna of a rich ecosystem, but on a scale far larger than the horizon of our observations.
Martin Rees
#59. There is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.
James Burgh
#60. Writing about personal thoughts and observations, subjective feelings and objective reality is a gateway experience that intensifies a person's level of consciousness. Every degree of increased consciousness can lead to increased knowledge of the world and self-understanding.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#61. 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
#62. Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you have is observations that don't make sense. And that's not science. That's just taking notes.
Geoffrey West
#63. Why is it that those who are the most concerned with manners rarely have any themselves?
Heidi Schulz
#64. Oppenheimer's theorizing was so startlingly original - so far in advance of the corroborating observations and so far off the beaten track of astrophysical research - that his colleagues' ignorance cost him the recognition he deserved.
Algis Valiunas
#65. I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.
Tove Jansson
#66. Sometimes, the only way to learn something really well is to revert to the state of mind of a novice and reawaken to the raw observations that you have accumulated instead of relying on the conclusions you have reached from the exogenous premises absorbed through teaching and bookish learning.
Erik Naggum
#67. Feeling alone among the many is normal.
Feeling many when you are alone, calls for a professional help. A qualified shrink can always shrink your ego down to being again alone.
Boris Zubry
#68. I have argued that a religion or a philosophy cannot speak about facts of the world - if it does, it is now or will eventually be wrong - but it can and should speak about the relevance and ranking of facts and observations.
Erik Naggum
#69. Chance leads to discoveries, and mutagenesis is a way to enhance one's chances of finding a surprise. Often it is the exceptional observations that lead to advances; once you understand exceptions, you understand the whole picture.
Bruce Beutler
#70. On the whole, the evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations ...
David Douglass
#71. People give out information all the time. You just have to know who to ask.
Laura Griffin
#72. Jeff Selingo is one of the most respected observers of American higher education ... Not all will agree with his observations, conclusions, predictions and recommendations, but all will gain from this thoughtful, well-written, provocative volume. I highly recommend it.
David J. Skorton
#73. This new understanding of processes on Europa would not have been possible without the foundation of the last 20 years of observations over Earth's ice sheets and floating ice shelves.
Saul Perlmutter
#74. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception ... you see what is, where most people see what they expect.
Tsitsi Dangarembga
#75. The enormous influence of novelty
the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment
is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.
John Ruskin
#76. I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men.
Gore Vidal
#77. Why the Devil survived for so long? Is it because he is the Devil or is it because he is much smarter than the oldest guy around? Go figure.
Boris Zubry
#78. I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.
Mos Def
#79. Sometimes 'feelings' aren't as airy-fairy as they seem. Sometimes they're just the product of observations we haven't realized we've been making.
Kate Morton
#80. I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
Edmund Burke
#81. The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it.
George Bernard Shaw
#82. The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.
Chinmayananda Saraswati
#83. Writing is about taking everyday observations, things which people see almost every day of their lives, and yet bringing it to their attention for the very first time.
Jamie L. Harding
#84. The philosophy of science is inherent in the process. This is to say, you think critically, you draw a conclusion based on evidence, but we all pursue discovery based on our observations. That's where science starts.
Bill Nye
#85. Gifted people of discernment, intelligence, and talent flourish in virtually every occupation. Every field produces perceptive and prescient persons whom exhibit the rare capacity to observe what eludes most people.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#86. Martial (the main character of LOCUS SOLUS) has a very interesting conception of literary beauty: the work must contain nothing real, no observations about the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary constructions. These are in themselves ideas from an extrahuman world.
Pierre Janet
#87. The real reason why general relativity is widely accepted is because it made predictions that were borne out by experimental observations.
Brian Greene
#88. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
George Santayana
#89. Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.
Stephen Hawking
#90. But those stories inspire observations and experiments that do help us sort out what's going on. The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.
Frans De Waal
#91. My observations are not bread crumbs. They do not dissolve. They are on record, on film printed in books, and found on the Internet. I am happy to share them. For this I was born.
Bill Cosby
#92. The once deep reservoirs filled with our vast emotional understanding have evaporated over the generations and we are now nothing more than a shallow cesspool of impossible expectations
Phillip McCarron
#93. The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.
Simon Newcomb
#95. The scientists are really scared. Their [global warming] observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than their climate models predicted.
Gwynne Dyer
#96. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#97. I will throw all my best efforts into it, my thoughts and political observations, but ultimately I want to create a narrative that keeps you turning the pages and leaves you with a sense that this thing has a reason for being there.
Frank Miller
#98. Scientists never study the important things. Like why some animals seem to have evolved the ability to gloat.
Joe Hill
#99. Be careful of averages and how they're applied. One way that they can fool you is if the average combines samples from disparate populations. This can lead to absurd observations such as:
"On average, humans have one testicle.
Daniel J. Levitin
#100. The secret to your purpose is to find what you feel is important, and not pursue what others would think is important. When you think highly of yourself, me thinking highly of you will never be enough!
Shannon L. Alder
