Quotes About Observation

A thought struck me as I left – the bags in which you are given food at McDonald's are almost identical in texture, shape and size with the vomit bags tucked in the seat pockets of aircraft.

One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it and then see what happens.

There is another word for this extremist noticing—this sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness, by the already-been-theres and seen-thats of the adult mind—and that word, of course, is wonder.

By the grace of this forgetting, we temporarily shelve our inherited ways of looking and see things as if for the first time

does the novelty and power of this sort of radical noticing impress women as much as men? I tend to doubt it.)

They could see this dance of subjectivities because they cultivated the plant's-eye view, the animal's-eye view, the microbe's-eye view, and the fungus's-eye view—perspectives that depend as much on imagination as observation.

We have a tendency to assume that what we can see is the important thing to look at.

Judson Brewer, a researcher at Yalefn7 who was using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators, noticed that his scans and Robin's looked remarkably alike.

Yet the organic label itself—like every other such label in the supermarket—is really just an imperfect substitute for direct observation of how a food is produced, a concession to the reality that most people in an industrial society haven't the time or the inclination to follow their food back to the farm, a farm which today is apt to be, on average, fifteen hundred miles away.

There's something exceptional about watching a video and simultaneously thinking 'That was genius!' and 'I could have done that!'

A policeman must know everything - and not tell. He must know where all the sin is and not partake.

We really have only been observing Neptune with big telescopes since shortly before 1989.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.

I'll basically eat anything that a chef puts in front of me. One of the reasons is respect for the chef. I watch chefs eat at other chefs' restaurants, and they're very aware not to leave anything over because the chef is watching very closely. It's a very sincere interaction when two chefs are cooking for one another.

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

I'm not like a university-educated scholar. I just sing what I see.

Composers, artists, actors, singers - all of them, I think, unconsciously learn from others. I'm sure it's not conscious, but they can't help it.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

I had to wait my turn. I had to learn that even when you're sitting behind somebody, you still have a chance to learn something every single day.

My kids make me laugh every single day - especially when they're their most precocious. My son said to me the other day, 'Why are you so dramatic?' And I just thought, 'Really? You know that word? And also, you've already noticed how dramatic I am?' That just really made me laugh.

I don't like to analyze what I do too much, but I certainly never meet a single person and say, 'You're the next character.' People think that's what I do. They also think that I sit down and observe and try to imitate random people. I've never done that at all.

You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.

I have a phenomenal memory. I remember every single thing that anybody said to me, ever did to me, who was nice to me and who was not nice to me.

You, I, we all encounter behaviors that we might say, I wouldn't do that. But she has a huge amount of contact with how people live. She sees more hospices and sink estates than most people.