Quotes About Observation

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

You can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamn contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbrush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you'll see something, maybe.

If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument.

I'm not sure that I care for the idea of strangers examining my daily habits and folkways, studying my language, inspecting my costume, questioning me about my religion, classifying my artifacts, investigating my sexual rites and evaluating my chances for cultural survival. So I lived alone.

I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description.

Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?

In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.

I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description.

the only birds I can recognize without hesitation are the turkey vulture, the fried chicken, and the rosey-bottomed skinny-dipper.

Plainly, she is not coming back. I can tell by the pattern of the cracks in the plaster. There's a code there, a message. Like the secret message in the final bars of Shostakovich's fifteenth and last symphony. Faint cryptic signals, like the clicking of a telegraph key, against the remote and sustained monotone of the violins—a song from outer space. What was he trying to tell us?

You just got here, sir." "I know but how do we get out?" "Same way you came in. It's a dead-end road." "So we see the same scenery twice?" "It looks better going out.

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

The world is a zoo

You don't see anything, do you? You see everything but the goddamn mind; you see all the little specs and crap, but you don't see what goes on, do you?

The whole of science is merely a refinement of everyday thinking. —Albert Einstein

Your problem, dear chap, as I have had occassion to remind you, is that you see but you do not observe; you hear but you do not listen. For a literary man, Watson - and note that I do not comment on the merit of your latest account of my little problems - for a man with the pretenses of being a writer, you are singularly unobservant. Honestly, sometimes I am close to despair.

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.

He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.

Ron fut frappé par le contraste qui régnait entre les coulisses de la justice avec leurs cages à barreaux d'arrière-cour et la solennité très digne de la salle du tribunal. Le public voyait l'édifice, pas les communs.

Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?

If you don't know there's a trampoline in the room, you're not going to dust the ceiling for prints.

En boca cerrada no entran moscas [The closed mouth swallows no flies].

One white foot—try him,Two white feet—buy him,Three white feet—look well about him;Four white feet—go without him.