Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

You sort of assume that everyone knows how television works, but they don't actually, why should they?

A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.

Nature is all that we think we know plus all that we don't know whether or not we know that we don't know it.

I grew up in Louisiana and I think people get it confused. They assume that I lived in California or that's where I'm from. I worked there, but I didn't live there.

If people don't think the odds are against you, you're doing it wrong.

The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine.

People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing.

Don't let the difficulty of actually achieving a shot make you think that the shot is good.

Our time on Earth is already short enough. For me, it's like every single day I try to be as happy as I can. It's crazy to think about. We never have enough time. That's always the thing. We always want to do more. So it's about being able to spend time on the things that are most important to you. Life is a lot easier that way, and obviously life is pretty difficult a lot of the time.

It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.

I don't know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don't think I could.

Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it's not the destination, it's the journeyto get there. It's a way of thinking and it's an intellectual curiosity, a desire to know how the world works, and to know what the fundamental principles of the world are, and to know our place in it. I think once we stop asking questions like "what is the age of the universe," or "how are the instructions of DNA carried out on a microscopic level," once we stop asking questions like that, we're dead.

You know how you always expect someone to think the same as you and then your like, really shocked when they don't? Like when it's a cold day and you turn to the person next to you and say, 'Its so cold, aren't you cold?' and then they say 'no.' It's kinda like, 'what, are you a communist?'

Think before you speak. Think before you judge. Think before you think you have a person all figured out.

You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed!

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

I've never been a fan of labels. I think its very easy to kind of look at somebody and just kind of throw a label on them 'They're crazy.'

It's like an inner struggle for me, between saying I don't give a **** and trying to make it work. You want to do the right thing, but I'm sick of people thinking I'm difficult.

There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of their obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths or at least they do not make them the object of any concious knowledge. People are so bliend to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

Like any artwork, things become richer if you know more about them; but I don't think that's crucial.

I can't give you a specific number today, in large part because the analysis upon which we would make that determination has not been completed. . . . I think it is fair to say there may be additional costs associated with a farming operation, but it is very difficult to quantify.