Quotes About Observation

Tell me, Wittgenstein's asked a friend, why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating? His friend replied, Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth. Wittgenstein replied, Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?

Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.

Es ist ein seltsamer Zufall, dass alle die Menschen, deren Schädel man geöffnet hat, ein Gehirn hatten.

Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

The man who said that one cannot step into the same river twice said something wrong; one can step into the same river twice.

Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you sometimes say: I must be wrong, that colour is certainly the same as yesterday? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal.

Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)

Se si guarda negli occhi un animale tutti i sistemi filosofici crollano.

we are ready enough to note the faults of others, while all the time unconscious of our own.

Parlo, parlo, dico sciocchezze, faccio lo svagato; ma non è vero, sai? Perché osservo tutto io, invece; osservo tutto!

Nulla turba e sconcerta piú di due occhi vani che dimostrino di non vederci, o di non vedere ciò che noi vediamo. Perché guardi cosí? E nessuno pensa che tutti dovremmo guardare sempre cosí, ciascuno con gli occhi pieni dell'orrore della propria solitudine senza scampo).

Ma un poeta può anche non badare a queste cose, che son di fatto. Un poeta può veder le stelle anche quando non si vedono, e viceversa poi non vedere tant'altre cose, che tutti gli altri vedono.

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound to woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are allowed somehow to see.

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience.

We don't want to be the conquistadors. We want to be Charles Darwin.

Hilda had stayed, but as soon as she saw

Dear Blubbo, How is it going? It is fine here. My sisters are fine. Mom is usual. Everything is regular in life except I am still seeing the burning skull heads. Yesterday Mom took me to Sears for school clothes. I told my sisters I could see the people's head bones. They said DO NOT tell Mom. A guy moved a trailer onto the empty lot by our house. His skull is spectacular, many colors glowing.

once i knew the blinking cat could not really blink, was just paper and ink.

She crouched down, then

Don't leave your home without a notebook, paper scraps, something to write with. * Don't walk into the world without your eyes and ears focused and open. * Don't make excuses about what you don't have or what you would do if you did, use that energy to 'find a way, make a way.

In painting, three things must be considered - the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.