#observation

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#ignorance #observation

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health. ↗

— Francis Bacon

#beyond #finds #good #health #hurt

Observation is an old man's memory. ↗

— Jonathan Swift

#memory #observation #old

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry. ↗

— Samuel Smiles

#become #individual #individual men #industry #men

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation. ↗

— Adam Smith

#after #changes #detail #doing #facts

Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation. ↗

— Joseph Stiglitz

#attempting #concerned #day #economic #every

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things. ↗

— Anne Sullivan

#about #children #desire #discrimination #excite

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth. ↗

— Alexis Carrel

#few #lead #little #many #much

Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames. ↗

— Brian P. Cleary

#observational-comedy #observations #storytelling #humor

The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The new order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'. ↗

— Bob Dylan

#political-observation #politics #song-lyrics #song-lyrics