Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords.

A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced.

That's history. I say history because it happened in the past.

In a very simple sense I want everything that's in a work to be there for the reason that it's needed. It's not an ornamentation. It's not there because I thought it looked nice but because it has to be there.

What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?

The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

The past isn't useful until its place in the present is found.

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

Anyone I may have used should feel happy that they even had a use. It's better than being useless.

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.

Priority is a function of context.

Without context words and actions have no meaning at all

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

TDF is more essential today than it was when it was first founded in 1968.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

My approach to violence is that if it's pertinent, if that's the kind of movie you're making, then it has a purposeI think there's a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It's not an intellectual process, it's an instinctive process. I like to think it's not violence for the sake of violence and in this particular film, it's actually violence for the annihilation of violence.

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

There's nothing tiny or insignificant. Everything is significant. And everything flows on the same basis of Laws. Whether you are looking at world events or something that's happening in your kitchen drawer, broad and important, or narrow and seemingly insignificant, there's potential for connection or disconnection in either case. And it is only the connection or the disconnection that is of really any importance.

Please understand, I am not saying that technology is unimportant. I understand that technology is important.

The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter?

A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.

If you're right, and nobody really cares what's out there, I wonder whether we're even worth saving.