#observation

A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#observational #perception #perception

I think men get nervous when women start counting the number of female senators, and whites become edgy when they hear the next Supreme Court seat will probably go to a Latino. This isn't always because they object to sharing the spoils, by the way; it just reminds us that the melting pot may not be working, and we haven't yet achieved the ambiguous national dream of becoming a nation of indistinguishable beige atheists. ↗

— Dahlia Lithwick

#dreams

As, however, the port in reality lies in thirty-two degrees thirty-four minutes, according to the observations that have been made, they went much beyond it, thus making the voyage much longer than was necessary. ↗

— Junipero Serra

#been #beyond #degrees #however #lies

If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#theology #war #men

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation. ↗

— Samuel Richardson

#lay #least #most #observation #observe

I thought, gazing at the beauty of the landscape again, it is as though the fiend has prevailed against the angels, and fixed his throne in a heaven, to rule it as though it were Hell. ↗

— Tom Holland

#contrast #evil #good-and-evil #heaven-and-hell #observation

And this thesis is somewhat connected with general social and political observations, because it establishes the fact that the number of consumers is considerably larger than the number of producers, a fact which exercises a not inconsiderable social and political pressure. ↗

— Hjalmar Schacht

#connected #considerably #consumers #establishes #exercises

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#called #commonly #cynicism #got #observation

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