Quotes About Observation

This is the old way of thinking, and most people think first as they have been taught to think; and next, as they see others think.

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.

Vision without execution is hallucination. .. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo [da Vinci] knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history's consummate innovator.

Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable.

Four men may meet under the same lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of rendezvous with his young lady. But to expect this to happen night after night is unwise….

There is economy in this. For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question. In

Ich bin ein Privatier und professioneller Flaneur, ich habe viel Zeit und Muße zum Beobachten. Und ich habe alle Herles-Olmshock-Romane von Olyander Conthura gelesen - zigmal! Das schult das detektivische Auge und die Kombinationsgabe ungemein!

Mein Freund der Dichter beschrieb nun die einfachsten Dinge, die er finden konnte",fuhr er fort, "und stellte fest, daß es das Schwierigste überhaupt war. Es war leicht, einen Palast aus Schnee und Eis zu beschreiben, aber unsäglich schwer, dasselbe mit einem einzelnen Haar zu tun. Oder einem Löffel. Einem Nagel. Einem Zahn. Einem Salzkorn. Einem Holzsplitter. Einer Kerzenflamme. Einem Wassertropfen.

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

And so you try as hard as you can to separate out what you wish from what is actually there, never abandoning your ultimate dreams for the film, but trying as hard as you can to see what is actually on the screen.

In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.

Para ver claro, basta con cambiar la dirección de la mirada. ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.

I aimlessly travel, meaning I have no agenda other than to get small in the world, be quiet and observe people.

Ivan and Willis, watching as Sadie panted, stood up, and then lay down again. "It won't be long now." Willis's eyes sparkled. He was no doubt excited, even though this was probably old hat for him.

The doings of Sherlock Holmes are better recorded by a Watson than by another Holmes.

Davis turned his head

to ask powerful Why questions. To do so, we must: •  Step back. •  Notice what others miss. •  Challenge assumptions (including our own). •  Gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry. •  Question the questions we're asking. •  Take ownership of a particular question. While a fairly straightforward process, it begins by moving backward.

Great questioners "keep looking"—at a situation or a problem, at the ways people around them behave, at their own behaviors. They study the small details; and they look for not only what's there but what's missing. They step back, view things sideways, squint if necessary.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Hackett Fischer observed that questions "are the engines of intellect5—cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry.

Contextual inquiry is about asking questions up close and in context, relying on observation, listening, and empathy to guide us toward a more intelligent, and therefore more effective, question.

After observing about a hundred Q-storm sessions around the world, Gregersen has noted some patterns. "At around twenty-five questions, the group may stall briefly and say, 'That's enough questions.' But if you push on beyond that point, some of the best questions come as you get to fifty or even seventy-five.

What's required is a willingness to go out into the world with a curious and open mind, to observe closely, and—perhaps most important, according to a number of the questioners I've interviewed—to listen.