Quotes About Observation

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to people if they have barbarian8 souls.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Out of sight is out of mind. The closer your hives are to your residence the better. Beginners need colonies nearby so they can visit them often. Casual visits are important even if you don't open the hives. You can learn much simply by observing the entrance.

Every belief about every aspect of the world is based on countless inferences we make via mental processes we can't observe.

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Thinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone.

discovery starts with anomalies.

The first step to overturning conventional wisdom, when conventional wisdom is wrong, is to look at the world around you. See the world as it is, not as others wish it to be.

Monterey, as far as my observation goes, is decidedly the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place in California.

We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths for the by-ways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought among our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.

The cool feats of our scientific men are known to us all – such as that of Sir Humphry Davy inhaling a particular gas with an accurate report every minute or two of its successive effects upon his brain and sense.

Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from The Conqueror)

Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else.

she watched the storm move off on lightning legs.

Con qué rapidez se acepta lo increíble si se ve con frecuencia!

They said he used to cackle and bark in his crib after dark. They said he walked at two months and sat staring at the moon whenever it shone. Those were things that people said. His parents were always worried about him. An only child, they noticed his flaws quickly. They thought he was blind until the doctor told them it was just a vacuous stare.

For a moment, looking felt like something that happened to you rather than something you did. Not 'Are you who I think you are?' Am I who you think I am?

It's amazing how crazy things become, once you start looking at them.

Listen closer, listen smaller, listen lighter, to any noise at all, and hear what the world will still sound like, long after your concert ends.

You can't see what you don't understand. But what you think you already understand, you'll fail to notice.

What frightens people most will one day turn to wonder. And then people will do what four billion years have shaped them to do: stop and see just what it is they're seeing.

She becomes her father's star and only pupil for the simple reason that she alone, of all the family, sees what he knows: plants are willful and crafty and after something, just like people.

They wouldn't know how to see what he put in front of their eyes.

We are not...wired to see slow, background change, when something bright and colorful is waving in our faces.