A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.

If you look at me close enough, there’s a small resemblance to a chicken nugget. I don’t know if it’s my skin texture or my hair, but the resemblance is definitely there.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts ‚Sign.‘

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

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

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

Once elected, the Pope is by virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error. God would change any spend thrift politician into a responsible Pope.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

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

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn’t have to go so fast.

When I came to Delhi and noticed an insider view, I felt what it was, and I was surprised to see it. It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

I love to watch times change!

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Man is by nature a political animal.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

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

If you’re a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.