Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
Our searches for numerical order lead as often to terminal nuttiness as to profound insight.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History. W.W. Norton & Company, 1985, p. 217.
The import of this proverb that eventually things get so bad that people take radical steps to organize things. Unfortunately, historically when there have been periods of disorder and anarchy, a strongman or dictator usually takes over and provides the organization,
Stockman was the member of the Reagan staff who was in charge of the budget. He admitted that neither he nor any of the other staff or officials really understood the complexities of the United States budget. It had become so huge and complicated that it is likely that no one person was capable of understanding it any longer. However, Stockman, a brilliant man, has been the only OMB Budget Director to admit his lack of total understanding. He was fired from his job for his candor.
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, where he divided his time teaching there and at Harvard.
