Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth.
Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe.
The bearings of this observation lays in the application of it.
Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
I'm not an expert on Islam, but I think there are lots of noble religions whose basic principles could stand considerably more observation in the world of business.
In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.
In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity [i. e evolutionism] has always necessitated on retreat from pure empiricism [i. e. , logic an observation], and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists [i. e creationist], not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have struck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach. . . It was Darwin the evolutionist who was retreating from the facts.
Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.
Whether in families or in politics, a good observation: "One can disagree without being disagreeable. "
That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
Those who cannot themselves observe can at least acquire the observation of others.
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
It is what you choose not to observe in your life that controls your life.
Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts.
If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.
We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation. ' Creative viewing.
[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)
Sickness sensitizes man for observation, like a photographic plate.