Quotes About Observation

She couldn't help but feel a certain vicarious embarrassment.

Intuition, they called it, but Strike knew it to be the reading of subtle signs, the subconscious joining of dots.

You have got it exactly. All the other states just vanish. The land of maybe becomes the land that never was . At that point all the other states cease to be in any way real. They become, if you like, just dreams or fantasies, and the observed state is the real one. This is called reduction of the quantum states . You will soon get used to it.

Oh no, you do not get any choice in the matter. What you are likely to see is determined by the probabilities for the various quantum states. What you actually see is a matter of random choice. You do not get to choose what will happen; the quantum amplitudes only give the probability of different results, but they do not fix what will happen. That is pure chance and only becomes fixed when an observation is made.

If you don't have any observation to show which hole the electrons go through, them you get interference between the effects of the two holes. If you do observe the electrons, then you find that indeed they are in one place or the other, not both, but in that case they also act as you would expect if they had come through one hole only and you do not get any interference. The problem is that there is no way in which you can look at the electrons without disturbing them. . . .

I found Wolfe watching Fritz prepare dinner from the wooden chair with arms near the window that had been constructed to his specifications.

Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.

The picture should only start the observer, should make him think he sees more than is on the canvas. To do this, the painter takes all the factors of the canvas and sets them in motion. He must create a rhythm of movement through all.

If I could see and really understand the essence of the life that is right around me I could with even such technique as I now command make masterpieces.

We know how the people of Argentina ruined their country. We know how the people of Venezuela ruined their country. Few Americans know much about the history of Argentina or Venezuela. But if they wish to know how the people of the USA are ruining their own country, all they have to do is look around themselves, including, in most cases, looking in the mirror.

Based on these journal entries, it would appear that the main

Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker.

Keep an eye to the future, and ear to the past, and after thinking it over notice nothing much lasts.

Psychologist Susan Fiske observes, 'Attention is directed up the hierarchy. Secretaries know more about their bosses than vice versa; graduate students know more about their advisors than vice versa.' Fiske explains this happens because, like our fellow primates, 'people pay attention to those who control their outcomes. In an effort to predict and possibly influence what is going to happen to them, people gather information about those with power.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. —Henry David Thoreau

As this VP discovered, being a boss is much like being a high-status primate in any group: the creatures beneath you in the pecking order watch every move you make – and so they know a lot more about you than you know about them.

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different."23

when I am there to visit and get to know the people and how they work, I can't learn much sitting in a private office.

And sometimes—if you are observant and patient—being invisible gives you access to information that can help you turn the tables on powerful assholes.

The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called 'faith.

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.

and Jess was looking through his spyglass. He scanned the wooded hillsides around the little