Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

Normally I don't watch myself, because I'm not very objective.

Clarity and consistency are not enough: the quest for truth requires humility and effort.

I try not to be overly analytical.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Irony is the hygiene of the mind.

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

We can be critical of the things that we love. That is possible.

Look at the evidence and to be willing to question your own truths, and to be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody that whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be.

I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them.

If something is wrong, it'll prove to be wrong in the wash, and if it's right, you don't want to not expose yourself to it - so I read everything, no matter how horrible it gets. You listen and take it in and if it doesn't sway you, you'll know you considered it.

I really like watching myself a lot because it gives me an opportunity to see it from outside the flesh, and when I view it like that, I can be a lot more cynical and see the things that need to be attacked.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

You've got to guard against speaking more clearly than you think.

I cannot abide stupidity, in myself or in others.

I think what's always important is not to be contrarian for its own sake but to really get at the truth.

I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.