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

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.

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

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’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

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

That was the first time I saw a horse start from a kneeling position!

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

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

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.

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.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

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

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

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.

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

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?

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.

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

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

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

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

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

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.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, might like one result better than another.

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.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

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.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

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

There might be some serious fun in politics.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

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

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

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

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

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.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

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.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

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.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

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.

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.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!