Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

We don't look at problems logically, we look at them emotionally. We look at them through the guts. We look at them as if we're doing a high school problem, like what is beautiful, what makes me recognized among my peers. We don't go and think about things. We, as a society, don't wish to engage in rational thought.

The problem with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds.

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.

I'm bad at rationalisation - very bad.

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Anytime emotions are involved, you cannot come up with an impartial and objective assessment of any given problem.

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But that's where an interesting conversation begins.

Objective leaders identify their unproductive mental models and tweak them for greater effectiveness.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

I don't read reviews and I don't know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

The only exercise I excel at is jumping to conclusions.

It's very difficult for me to look at politics with clear eyes. I'll read a story in the paper and the first thing that pops into my head is, what would my dad say about that? Then I try to break out of that and think, 'What would Said say about that,' and then it gets complicated.

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.

We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

It's actually very surprising how little we think about the quality of our decision-making and how we could improve it. How absent decision-making classes are from educational curricula. How little we think about how it is we think.

People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

I'm generally slow to anger, quick to forgive, and I take in information before making decisions. So no matter how controversial the decision, my general demeanour is to put on white lab coat and gloves and look at the evidence, weigh the arguments and see what makes sense.

Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel.

College professors are suspect because whenever emotion is in control, anti-intellectualism prevails.

Emotion is a rotten base for politics.