Knowledge is what we get when an observer preferably a scientifically trained observer provides us with a copy of reality that we can all recognize.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

I guess I'm a very keen observer and I'd like to think I have a good imagination.

I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously and I would I think be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.

All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed or can be made to agree about facts of sensible experience through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive and over which the individual will and character have no control.

The physical world including our bodies is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe ' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory.

Over the past 20 years I have noticed that the most flexible dynamic inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world - which like it or not is modern reality.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow and courage from the jay who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.