Science

"As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that."

"In generalizing lies the difficulty of scientific map-making, for it no longer allows the cartographer to rely merely on objective facts but requires him to interpret them subjectively. To be sure the selection of the subject matter is controlled by considerations regarding its suitability and value, but the manner in which this material is to be rendered graphically depends on personal and subjective feeling. But the latter must not predominate: the dictates of science will prevent any erratic flight of the imagination and impart to the map a fundamentally objective character in spite of all subjective impulses. It is in this respect that maps are distinguished from fine products of art. Generalized maps and, in fact, all abstract maps should, therefore, be products of art clarified by science."

"All generalizations are false, including this one."

"An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular."

"Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological / resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul."

"I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways."

"Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as "glittering generalities," have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever."

"A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation."

"Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed by generalization from his appearances in the past."

"The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. … The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization."

"Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us."

"The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide."

"Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don’t say, “This is wrong! Stop it!” you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable."

"My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein."

"Most, if not all, of the great ideas of modern mathematics have had their origin in observation."

"Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education."

"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."

"One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy."

"The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature. Just as, when we attempt to verify any physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the discrepancy to errors of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula."

"Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning"

"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."

"Even if it had not been possible to reproduce the disease in animals and consequently to verify the hypothesis, this simple observation would have been sufficient to demonstrate the way in which the disease was propagated."

"My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity."

"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."

"Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés."

"Scientists believe that nature is orderly and measurable— that natural laws, such as the law of gravity, do not change with time, and that a natural event, or phenomenon,can be understood more fully through observation. Scientists use all of their senses in making observations."

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

"It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically... When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions."

"Not observation of a duty but liberty itself is the pledge that assures fidelity."

"We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation."

"It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries."

"It's my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. Architects are very famous; they've got huge projects. What goes on in and around them has been relegated to a very minor role."

"Early in life I learned, just through observation, that right always wins out over wrong. If a person has good intentions in his heart and wants to do the right thing, then there are certain ways that any obstacle can be overcome."

"Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action."

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

"Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. Bang. And y'know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into god damn snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia...but you didn't lift a finger! You don't really give a damn about human beings. I've watched you. You never cared about what's her name, Janey Slater, even before you ditched her. Soon you won't be interested in Sally Jupiter's little girl, either. You're driftin' outta touch, Doc. You're turnin' into a flake. God help us all."

"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."

"At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always."

"Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience."

"First we have an observation, then we have numbers that we measure, then we have a law which summarizes all the numbers. But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident."

"It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts."

"When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded."

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."

"Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation."

"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be."

"Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic."

"Everything is literally entangled, it can all be communicated with and affected 'at a distance' because there is no distance, only a simulation of apparent separation which our limited consciousness feeds us second by second at 11 bits. The 'telepathy' which brings people together is no more or less supernatural or unlikely than the 'telepathy' which brings two of your fingers together when you think about it. Patience, participation and constant close observation of what's going on, on the inside and on the outside will soon make you a fine sorcerer, if that's what you want to be."

"Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly."

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot."