Quotes About Observation

A world created based on judgement evokes rage, A world created by observation invokes insight.

Within infinite myths lies an eternal truth Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes Indra, a hundred You and I, only two

A world created based on judgement evokes rage. Life becomes a battleground (rana-bhoomi) like Kuru-kshetra, where both sides feel like victims, where everyone wants to win at all costs, where someone will always lose. A world created by observation evokes insight, hence affection, for we see the hunger and fear of all beings.

What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature--which is worth a hundred in any Zoo--must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons. ... How do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage?

I saw young Jazzy

Above the stage was a glass-floored second stage, which allowed customers to look up and watch another girl dancing overhead. This multidimensional display of poontang reminded me of the 3-D chessboard on Star Trek, which in turn reminded me that I was a huge nerd.

The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

People look at you and forget about things.

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.

Looking at things is never time wasted. If your children want to stand and stare, let them. When I was marvelling at the beauty of a painting or enjoying a great view it did not occur to me that the experience, however intense, would be of value many years later. But there it has remained, tucked away in hidden bits of my mind and now it comes, shouldering aside even the most passionate love affairs.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize. — Diane Arbus, Revelations (Random House, 2003)

to their cars in the driveway. I smiled, watching

She tried to walk softly and wished the trees wouldn't stare at her so.

Writing and conversation were vital for success in the world, Elizabeth sounded the family creed and, like Mary and Abigail when their sons left for Harvard, exhorted: "Committing our thoughts to paper makes us more attentive—more close observers—of everything which obliges us to think." Writing a mother was particularly salubrious.

Adams had retained his Puritan belief in hierarchy, while Jefferson, for all his aristocratic airs, was committed to leveling power. John still feared the many (as he had observed long ago in Paris), Jefferson the few.

Noel lay stuck to the Naugahyde and apparently felt nothing. His back, soft and wasted, was not unlike Max's. Noel's was so feminine; Max's so dark and hairy - hairier than Noel's. It was dismal to have a hairy wife.

Nothing is ever the same. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be trusted to be there. Nothing is safe, including home. Why lie to yourself? Every day we leave something, someone, some observation behind.

You can see. Seeing is believing. Seeing is the gift that keeps giving. It's much more engaging than being seen.

As Auguste Comte observed, "All revolutionary ideas are only social applications of the principle of private interpretation.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

Why, then, is it so crucial to have ethnographies of urban policing? The answer to this question certainly becomes clearer now. It is not simply that ethnography provides a sort of immersion in the world of law enforcement, allowing us to understand what happens when the police are in the field. It is perhaps more importantly that it produces a vision of a world that has been made either invisible or opaque to most of us.

Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.

The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen.

I have seen many a face that was more good-looking — never one that looked half so good.