"Observation is so wide awake, and facts..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.”
“If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.”
“Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.”
More on Knowledge
“My wisdom has long accumulated like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker. So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightnings.”
“History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.”
“He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.”
More on Science
“There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.”
“Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.”
“From my experience let me say this: in today's world it is no bad thing for a politician to have had the benefit of a scientific background. And not only politicians. Those who work in industry, in commerce, in investment. Indeed, so important has it become that I believe we are right to make science a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren.”