Investigation Quotes

The bar was crowded with theorizing Sherlockians, who in the absence of any actual evidence had created grand machinations to explain the crime. Minor points of canonical disagreement became reasons for brutal murder. Some tried to piece together their theories in small groups, hoping that with enough brainpower and expertise they might arrive at a solution. Others jumped straight over the "investigation" phase and landed square at the end of the story they were creating, instantly accusing the man across the table of some vile treachery. And, moreover, actually employing phrases like "vile treachery" in doing so. Everyone was a suspect. But at the world's largest Sherlockian gathering, everyone was a detective as well. ~ Graham Moore

Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know. ~ Mark Doty

We should go forward in courts and Congress with investigations into post-9/11 interrogations and the decisions leading to them. ~ Christine Pelosi

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The latest report says the results of an investigation will be released in three or four weeks. That's a long time for fruit flies and the press. ~ Denis Boyles

Of course our school life was not free from pranks. The property of the townspeople was moved to strange places in the night. One morning as the janitor was starting the furnace he heard a loud bray from one of the class rooms. His investigation disclosed the presence there of a domestic animal noted for his long ears and discordant voice. In some way during the night he had been stabled on the second floor. About as far as I deem it prudent to discuss my own connection with these escapades is to record that I was never convicted of any of them and so must be presumed innocent. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Anybody hear the great news, today? Jimmy Swaggart under investigation! Oh Ja-eezus! One day every one of those cocksuckers will get caught! I understand in the case of Mr. Swaggart, that he claims that it was not multiple encounters with many prostitutes - apparently, only one sweet young thing. And he did tell Cal Thomas of the Moral Majority that the sex act itself was not fully consumated. However he did admit to doing something por-no-graphic with the girl. Let's use our imaginations, ladies and gentlemen. ~ Frank Zappa

He resolved for Detective Geyer to undertake a careful and methodical search for the blunder which a criminal always makes between the inceptions and consummation of his crime. ~ J.D. Crighton

You don't have to believe in coincidences because they happen every day. The trick is to be able to discern when something is more than coincidence. ~ Glenn Jones

Only recently, the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. As ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions ... Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it. ~ Mike Leigh

Investigation is never complete. ~ Peter Greenaway

When radio keeps silent, our ears shall never hear the real details! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

To be fair, if we had married then, who knows what would have become of us? I doubt I would have liked your running about the country as a spy, leaving me alone for weeks at a time. And I daresay you would have had trouble concentrating on your work for worrying about me."
His grateful smile showed that he appreciated her attempt to mitigate his betrayal.
"Of course, later you could have…well…come after me. Once you established your business. While I was still un-betrothed. Why didn't you?"
"I don't suppose you would accept rampant idiocy as a reason?"
"I would…if I really thought it were the reason." When he stiffened, she added archly, "You aren't generally an idiot. Daft and a tad overbearing, yes, but not an idiot."
A sigh escaped him. He leaned past her to pull the curtain open just enough so he could keep an eye on the street.
When it looked as if he might not answer, she added, "Tristan thinks you didn't come after me because you were afraid that I couldn't love you."
He cast her a startled glance. "You told Tristan the truth about us?"
She winced. "And Lisette and Max. Sorry. Tristan sort of…forced it out of me."
"Well, that explains why Max and Lisette were willing to bring you here in the midst of such a crucial investigation. They've been pressing me for a long time to give you another chance. Because they thought you betrayed me."
Grabbing her hands, he gazed down at them with a haunted look. "And I suppose there's ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Mindfulness and fearless presence bring true protection. When we meet the world with recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-identification, we discover that wherever we are, freedom is possible, just as the rain falls on and nurtures all things equally. ~ Jack Kornfield

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. ~ Noam Chomsky

Today, Church policy in Ireland is to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. It recognises the Gardai and H.S.E. as those with responsibility for investigating such allegations and that any Church investigation should not take place until the investigation by the civil authorities has been completed. ~ Sean Brady

A man who should undertake to inquire into everything for himself, could devote to each thing but little time and attention. His task would keep his mind in perpetual unrest, which would prevent him from penetrating to the depth of any truth, or of grappling his mind indissolubly to any conviction. His intellect would be at once independent and powerless. He must therefore make his choice from amongst the various objects of human belief, and he must adopt many opinions without discussion, in order to search the better into that smaller number which he sets apart for investigation. It is true that whoever receives an opinion on the word of another, does so far enslave his mind; but it is a salutary servitude which allows him to make a good use of freedom.

A principle of authority must then always occur, under all circumstances, in some part or other of the moral and intellectual world. Its place is variable, but a place it necessarily has. The independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be less: unbounded it cannot be. Thus the question is, not to know whether any intellectual authority exists in the ages of democracy, but simply where it resides and by what standard it is to be measured. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Games are the most elevated form of investigation. ~ Albert Einstein

Freelance investigative reporter Danny Casolaro was looking into the Cabazon/Wackenhut projects as part of a larger conspiracy investigation at the time he was found dead in a West Virginia motel room in 1991, allegedly a suicide victim. He had told friends he was convinced that "spies, arms merchants and others were using the reservation as a low-profile site on which to develop weapons for Third World armies, including the Nicaraguan Contras. ~ Gary Webb

The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if you're lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for the age of meteorites; and the estimated time for the tidal evolution of the Moon's orbit (though this is much rougher), all agree in their testimony, and, what is far more important, the red-shift in the nebulae indicates that this date is fundamental, not merely in the history of our system, but in that of the material universe as a whole. ~ Henry Norris Russell

When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about ... What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers, and durations of calls; they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content ... If the intelligence committee actually wants to listen to a phone call they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation. ~ Barack Obama

Newton supposed that the case of the planet was similar to that of [a ball spun around on the end of an elastic string]; that it was always pulled in the direction of the sun, and that this attraction or pulling of the sun produced the revolution of the planet, in the same way that the traction or pulling of the elastic string produces the revolution of the ball. What there is between the sun and the planet that makes each of them pull the other, Newton did not know; nobody knows to this day; and all we are now able to assert positively is that the known motion of the planet is precisely what would be produced if it were fastened to the sun by an elastic string, having a certain law of elasticity. Now observe the nature of this discovery, the greatest in its consequences that has ever yet been made in physical science: -

I. It begins with an hypothesis, by supposing that there is an analogy between the motion of a planet and the motion of a ball at the end of a string.

II. Science becomes independent of the hypothesis, for we merely use it to investigate the properties of the motion, and do not trouble ourselves further about the cause of it. ~ William Kingdon Clifford

Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials. ~ Ralph Nader

Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error. ~ Andrew Jackson Davis

What? I'll do anything to help Harry!" "We can call the F.B.I." "The what?" "The Feline Bureau of Investigation. ~ Kristina Holmes

while grace sets apart Christianity, so does truth. Jesus was filled with grace and truth, and in Christianity you can know the truth, not just through some sort of spiritual experience, but also through careful investigation. ~ Lee Strobel

Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means. ~ Aristotle.

For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew. ~ Edmund Burke

It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions. ~ Goldwin Smith

[A murder investigation] is a system which involves an enormous amount of work for a large number of people, and has only got one thing in its favor. It is nearly always successful in the end. ~ Michael Gilbert

Those who are unacquainted with the details of scientific investigation have no idea of the amount of labour expended in the determination of those numbers on which important calculations or inferences depend. They have no idea of the patience shown by a Berzelius in determining atomic weights; by a Regnault in determining coefficients of expansion; or by a Joule in determining the mechanical equivalent of heat. ~ John Tyndall

As it happens" said my uncle," I intended to make an appearance at the met today anyway. Inspector Lestrade has been bumbling through another investigation, and I decided it would be best to offer my assistance before he travels too far down an incorrect deductive path- and note that I use the term deductive liberally. I don`t belive Lestrade could deduce in which direction a horse crossed the street even if he came upon a pile of its dung!"
Sherlock Holmes, The Chess queen enigma ~ Colleen Gleason

There may be men who think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so. Honest investigation can result only in growth. ~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... whenever you were in a fix or at a crossroads in an investigation, there were always two choices: to do nothing and worry, or to take some sort of action and deal with its associated risks. ~ Jessica Lawson

The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

His face registered the five stages of unlawful investigation: disbelief, skepticism, impatience, irritation, and astonishment. ~ Suzanne M. Trauth

What matters are not the truths other people tell us or the practices that we are able to mimic, but the spiritual discoveries we make through personal investigation. ~ Adyashanti

Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus is a brilliant and erudite investigation of the convergence between major trends in German Protestantism and Nazi racial anti-Semitism. By concentrating on the history of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, Heschel describes in forceful detail the Nazification of all aspects of Protestant theology, including the Aryanization of Jesus himself. This is a highly original and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich. ~ Saul Friedlander

The shot has gone under my rib, Boulard my boy, so it must have been the shortest one who fired.
Even his final sigh was a police investigation. ~ Timothee De Fombelle

For the Department of Energy to conduct this investigation is like the fox watching the hen house. ~ Shelley Berkley

The least dignified thing that can happen to a man is to be murdered. If he dies in his sleep he gets a respectful obituary and perhaps a smiling portrait; it is how we all want to be remembered. But murder is the great exposer: here is the victim in his torn underwear, face down on the floor, unpaid bills on his dresser, a meager shopping list, some loose change, and worst of all the fact that he is alone. Investigation reveals what he did that day - it all matters - his habits are examined, his behavior scrutinized, his trunks rifled, and a balance sheet is drawn up at the hospital giving the contents of his stomach. Dying, the last private act we perform, is made public: the murder victim has no secrets. ~ Paul Theroux

How could it limit its investigation to one sector of reality? How could it help being pluralistic? How could it help finding the same truth everywhere? ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Exactly what the great white eats in an emergency is a mystery ichthyologists solved by the late twentieth century after decades of investigation: whatever it wishes. ~ Michael Capuzzo

In my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable. ~ Socrates

Nothing matters but the facts. Without them, the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game. ~ Blake Edwards

The Manhattan district attorney has closed the well-publicized investigation of the handling of the $300 million fortune of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark - without charging anyone with a crime. ~ Bill Dedman

Does it take a blanket presupposition for a historian to discount some miracle stories as legendary? No, because, as even Bultmann recognized, there is no problem accepting reports even of extraordinary things that we can still verify as occurring today, like faith healings and exorcisms. However you may wish to account for them, you can go to certain meetings and see scenes somewhat resembling those in the gospels. So it is by no means a matter of rejecting all miracle stories on principle. Biblical critics are not like the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. ~ Robert M. Price

Wall Street is being investigated, but they are not asleep while it's being done. You see where the Senate took that tax off the sales of stocks, didn't you? Saved 'em $48,000,000. Now, why don't somebody investigate the Senate and see who got to them to get that tax removed? That would be a real investigation. ~ Will Rogers

The commonest error made in relation to poetry is that it consists simply in verse-making. Many confound the casket of meter and rhyme with the jewel of thought which it encloses, and, perhaps, in some instances, after close investigation, they have found the casket empty and turned away with feelings of disappointment and disgust. ~ Orson F. Whitney

Utter dependence is common to all domesticates. Non-human species depend wholly on us; we depend wholly on storable, retrievable, transmissable techniques. ~ John Livingston, From "Rogue Primate: An Investigation Into Human Domestication"

One of the fundamental characteristics of striated muscle, and the one involving the greatest difficulty in investigation, is the great rapidity with which changes take place in it. ~ Archibald Hill

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps it was true a century ago - I deeply regret that it is no longer true - but the United States criminal justice system long ago lost any legitimate claim to the loyal cooperation of American citizens. You cannot write tens of thousands of criminal statutes, including many touching upon conduct that is neither immoral nor dangerous, write those laws as broadly as you can imagine, scatter them throughout the thousands of pages of the United States Code - and then expect decent law-abiding, unsuspecting citizens to cooperate with an investigation into whether they may have violated some law they have never even heard about. The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline. ~ James Duane

Books about books are a rare species, special tomes for writers and book lovers. More than an affirmation of taste, a book about books is often a spirited celebration and sincere investigation. Quickly coveted, it remains on that particular shelf, guarded and revered, and eventually slips out of print. What good company we will keep then, among a library lost, only momentarily invisible, waiting patiently to be found. ~ Tom Cardamone

Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth. ~ Lactantius

The enjoyment that all morality has given us to now and that it continues to give us
and so, what has kept it going up to now
lies in everyone's right, without lengthy investigation, to praise and blame. And who could endure life without praising and blaming! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories: protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analyzing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law. ~ Peter Kropotkin

The Harkonnens discouraged investigation of the spice, didn't they? ~ Frank Herbert

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Archimedes to Eratosthenes greeting ... certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards because their investigation by the said method did not furnish an actual demonstration. But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge. ~ Archimedes

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. ~ Richard Feynman

The progress of science depends much less upon either theoretical considerations or systematic investigation than is commonly believed, but rather on the transmittal of reliable information, gained by chance or insight, from one set of men to their successors. ~ Gene Wolfe

You must avoid the investigation trap. You can't postpone tough decisions by studying them to death. ~ Percy Barnevik

And if Americans are willing to stand for what they believe in, I also expect public opinion to compel the U.S. government to open a torture and war crimes investigation. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms ... If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation. ~ Will Rogers

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis.

In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness.

Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.

We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised ~ John F. Kennedy

I'll tell you something that was unusual, though. When most people are caught lying to the police, they cave in pretty quickly. Emma's response was to tell another lie. It might have been planted in her head by her brief, but even so that's not a common reaction. ~ J.P. Delaney

I am my own investigation territory. ~ Lucas Samaras

Probably no branch of mathematics has experienced a more surprising growth than has ... topology ... Considered as a most specialized and abstract subject in the early 1920's, it is today [1938] an indispensable equipment for the investigation of modern mathematical theories. ~ Raymond Louis Wilder

Is not really a system of painting but a method of internal investigation. It is not the philosophy of painting but painting as philosophy. ~ Octavio Paz

Fermat never cared to publish his investigations, but was always perfectly ready, as we see from his letters, to acquaint his friends and contemporaries with his results. ~ Thomas Little Heath

The differences in alter personality states' self-concepts can be striking, but authorities routinely stress that these are more apparent than real (e.g., Putnam, 1989a; Kluft, 1991). Various typologies have been offered, but few systematic data exist. Types of MPD alters, such as child-like personality states, angry alters, protectors, and persecutors, are found often enough to warrant further investigation. ~ Frank W. Putnam

Cixi's lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity.

Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi's future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons' brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines' wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more "than nine million taels of silver had gone missing.

Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty.

Cixi's great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amoun ~ Jung Chang

The pursuit of natural knowledge, the investigation of the world - mental and material - in which we live, is not a dull and spiritless affair: rather is it a voyage of adventure of the human mind, a holiday for reckless and imaginative souls. ~ Archibald Hill

The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled. ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury

Olsons P.I. 'Kenny Jones' as he approaches a barman in a notorious Bangkok Gay bar as part of an investigation -
'I was tempted to ask him if he had heard the one about the two condoms walking down Soi Rome when they see The Balcony Pub. One condom turns to the other and says 'Let's go in there and get shit-faced' - ~ Warren Olson

Democrats had a secret meeting in Reid's office on Halloween night at 6:15 and they hatched this plot, ... They said the only way they could get this investigation going was to do it in secret. They say they've been frustrated for a year and a half in getting this investigation into whether the administration twisted the intelligence and they're making no apologies whatsoever for it. ~ George Stephanopoulos

My sister's the type who religiously watches the fear segments of her local Eyewitness News broadcasts, retaining nothing but the headline ... Everything is dangerous all of the time, and if it's not yet been pulled off the shelves, then it's certainly under investigation
so there. ~ David Sedaris

Every art or applied science and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seem to aim at some good; the good, therefore, has been well defined as that at which all things aim. ~ Aristotle

The lifeblood of Mercy For Animals is our undercover investigations of animal agriculture. ~ Nathan Runkle

The investigation described in the subsequent pages bears close relation to three sciences. It was approached by the author from the standpoint of astronomy and a desire to understand the variations of the sun. It was hoped that these variations could be more accurately studied by correlation with climatic phenomena. But the science of meteorology is still comparatively new and supplies us only with a few decades of records on which to base our conclusions. So botanical aid was sought in order to extend our knowledge of weather changes over hundreds and even thousands of years by making use of the dependence of the annual rings of trees in dry climates on the annual rainfall. If the relationship sought proves to be real, the rings in the trunks of trees give us not only a means of studying climatic changes through long periods of years, but perhaps also of tracing changes in solar activity during the same time. Thus astronomy, meteorology, and botany join in a study to which each contributes essential parts and from which, it is hoped, each may gain a small measure of benefit. ~ A.E. Douglass

...you cannot enter into an investigation with a philosophy that dictates the outcome. Objectivity is paramount; this is the first principle of detective work that each of us must learn. It sounds simple, but our presuppositions are sometimes hidden in a way that makes them hard to uncover and recognize. ~ J Warner Wallace

In examining the evidence of the Christian religion, it is essential to the discovery of truth that we bring to the investigation a mind freed, as far as possible, from existing prejudice, and open to conviction. ~ Simon Greenleaf

No human investigation can be called real knowledge if it does not pass through mathematical demonstrations; and if you say that the kinds of knowledge that begin and end in the mind have any value as truth, this cannot be conceded, but rather must be denied for many reasons, and first of all because in such mental discussions there is no experimentation, without which nothing provides certainty of itself. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency... ~ Tobias Smollett

The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become ~ Milan Kundera

Artful without being pretentious, well-made without being staid, Trey Moody's investigations of our weird and ordinary world are a little off, by which I mean that they're onto something. Read 'em and be crept into. ~ Graham Foust

There is no one kind of thing that we 'perceive' but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy: pens are in many ways though not in all ways unlike rainbows, which are in many ways though not in all ways unlike after-images, which in turn are in many ways but not in all ways unlike pictures on the cinema-screen
and so on. ~ J.L. Austin

The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together. ~ Andrew Olendzki

Suffering is a call for inquiry, all pain needs investigation. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sit down," she ordered Peabody.

"I prefer to stand."

"And I prefer to give you a good boot in the ass, but I'm restraining myself." Eve reached up, fisted her hands in her own hair and yanked until the pain cleared most of the rage.

"Okay, stand. You couldn't sit with that stick up your butt, anyway. One you shove up it every time Subject Monroe, Charles, is mentioned. You want to be filled in, you want to be briefed? Fine. Here it is."

She had to take another deep breath to insure her tone was professional. "On the evening of March twenty-six, at or about nineteen-thirty, I, accompanied by Roarke, had occasion to visit Areena Mansfield's penthouse suite at The Palace Hotel, this city. Upon entering said premises, investigation officer found subject Mansfield in the company of one Charles Monroe, licensed companion. It was ascertained and confirmed that LC Monroe was there in a professional capacity and had no links to the deceased or the current investigation. His presence, and the salient details pertaining to it, were noted in the report of the interview and marked Level Five in a stupid, ill-conceived attempt by the investigating officer to spare her fat-headed aide any unnecessary embarrassment."

Eve stomped back to her desk, snatched up her coffee, gulped some down. "Record that," she snapped.

Peabody's lip trembled. She sat. She sniffled.

"Oh, no." In genuine panic, Eve stabbed out a finger. " ~ J.D. Robb

Someone must have noticed a change in a person's lifestyle after October 22, 1989. Someone must have noticed inappropriate comments, or concerns about Jacob's investigation. Someone in the family suspects a member of being a child molester - or a neighbor notes someone with an unusual interest in children or who has few adult friends. But people second-guess themselves, they do not want to get involved, or they talk themselves out of what they know to be true. Maybe they are afraid. Many people have called with their suspicions, yet maybe someone still needs to call - could that someone be you? Please call the proper authorities. I still beg you to call if you have information about who took Jacob. It has been so long - please help. Call 251-4240 or 1-800-325-HOPE. You can remain anonymous. ~ Robert Dudley

There have been a couple of instances prior to now where members of the House have filed resolutions calling for release of the sealed files which were developed during the course of our committee's investigation. ~ Louis Stokes

Survival and persistence, sung defiantly in the high notes of the diva, are no small feats in a world that wishes fervently for one's nonexistence and/or silent complicity in one's own exploitation. The narcissistic self-regard implied in the negative definition of the diva is a radical insistence on self-love when no one else loves you, when you are not, according to social norms, worthy of being loved at all, but only of being desired in a way that uses you up or consumes you. To say that diva citizenship cannot change the world is to accept a meaning of "the world" that aligns it only with the privileged. An investigation of the real function of diva citizenship has to start by asking who these acts are for, and whether the very fact of having something for herself can change a person, who might then go on to change the world just by surviving in it for one more day. ~ Amy Gentry

Nothing is more obstructive to the investigation of the truth than prior commitments to partial truths. ~ Jacobus Arminius

As I've said before, and I still hold to, I truly am the most boring person alive. And if there was a great investigation to be found at the end of the resume, it would be, the most boring person alive. ~ Jodie Foster