James Whitcomb Riley Quotes

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden... name things as I find them.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

People are very much wrought up about the Communist bugaboo.

Few forms of life are so engaging as birds.

Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.

We have a saying in the union: "If a fellow looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the possibility is that he is a duck." That is the way with a Communist. If the guy does everything that the party does, the prospects are very good that he is a party member or fellow traveler.

Human nature fascinates me.

For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds.

As far as what I do love, I love birds; I love lavender.

My kid really loves bugs.

It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.

I like hummingbirds.

In science, we take large numbers of disparate facts and reduce them to see patterns. We use the patterns to reduce the amount of information. It's the reason we name species and genera and families in biology. It's also the reason we have names for certain types of geological features and so on in other fields.

The comparison between Harry Cohen and my grandfather is not one that bears close examination.

The first thing I do when I start a role is I look to see where we're similar. What do you get for nothing, you know?

Well, it's probably not something I'm conscious of, but I do gravitate towards characters that are kind of like me.

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

It's not what you like but what you are like that's important.

One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal.

The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.

What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?

Well, you could almost say, I suppose, that the scientist seeks what is similar between any two days, or bluebirds, or glaciers. And the poet seeks what is different. The artist seeks to celebrate the unique.

Now sir, said the bulldog in his business-like way. 'Are you a animal, vegetable, or mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew