Quotes about Observation

Practical experience and accurate observation show that one cannot influence one's own dreams. There are people, it is true, who assert that they can influence them. But if you look into their dream material, you find that they do only what I do with my disobedient dog: I order him to do those things I notice he wants to do anyhow, so that I can preserve my illusion of authority.

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

The national sport is to talk about the person who just left the room. In this, too, we are different from our idols, the English, whose principles forbid them from making personal remarks.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe, don't read what they write, don't ask them what they believe, just observe what they do.

The defects of a preacher are soon spied.

No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

As long as the world continues to be strange and interesting, I still want to take pictures of it.

On the day-long follows that I used to do with mothers and their offspring - these chimp families that I knew so well - there was hardly a day when I didn't learn something new about them.

Sometimes you lose sight of what's going on around you.

I'm not an analyzer. I've got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don't analyze people.