S J Gould Quotes & Sayings

They say desire is this endless loop. You can't get out of it even when you get what you desire."
"Why is that?"
"Because as soon as you get what you want, you're going to want it again, or want more. And since you can never really be satisfied, you suffer. Or if you use up what you desired, you suffer even more. — Peter Gould

Adam Johnson was a revolution when he came on — Bobby Gould

One does not play the piano with one's fingers, one plays the piano with one's mind. — Glenn Gould

My fantasy football team got mixed up in another fantasy and now they're stuck on a pirate ship with a chick in a Catwoman suit. — Dana Gould

The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed. — Glenn Gould

The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). — Stephen Jay Gould

Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world — Stephen Jay Gould

Why do old people drive with their mouths open? — Dana Gould

Earthquakes would be great if they could hit specific areas, like the parent lounge at a children's beauty pageant. — Dana Gould

A hungry man thinks only about how he can feed his family today. He doesn't care that how he feeds them today destroys his children's tomorrow. — Steven Gould

The world moves along at such a fast clip that we have little patience when things are slow, whether it's the line at a supermarket or Internet access. We've become intolerant of those things that cannot be accelerated or skipped entirely. I can't speed up the foundation work for a building, nor can I expect to play piano like Glenn Gould just because I want to. — Donald J. Trump

So." Dave raised his arms. "I am ready to claim my destiny. To be a leader for the nonstraight kinky masses."
"All hail gay kinky Jesus!" Kamen yelled.
We all chanted for gay kinky Jesus.
Dave raised his arms higher. "I shall lead my people into the light. And then I shall be martyred on the St. Andrew's cross."
Gould and I groaned. Dave looked at us. "Too soon?"
Gould shrugged. "Well, no. It's been like two thousand years. — J.A. Rock

Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa ... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles. — Stephen Jay Gould

I dont think a really good pie can be made without a dozen or so children peeking over your shoulder as you stoop to look in at it every little while. — John Gould

Isolation is the indispensable component of human happiness. — Glenn Gould

No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut. — Stephen Jay Gould

It is beyond my comprehension that any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substance from people in such great need simply because others use it for different purposes. — Steven Gould

I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [ ... ] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity. — Stephen Jay Gould

Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since most people are pretty modest instead of an arrogant S.O.B. like me, what comes naturally, you don't see as a special skill. It's just you. It's what you've always done. — Stephen Jay Gould

Among the old Norse, it was the custom for certain warriors to dress in the skins of the beasts they had slain, and thus to give themselves an air of ferocity, calculated to strike terror into the hearts of their foes. — Sabine Baring-Gould

The average permanent lasts about four months. — Dana Gould

The national oil companies still want to acquire some expertise so they will outsource more, but not totally. — Andrew Gould

Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity. — Stephen Jay Gould

I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal. — Stephen Jay Gould

The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright. — Stephen Jay Gould

In North Germany, a troublesome ghost is bagged, and the bag emptied in some lone spot or in the garden of a neighbour against whom a grudge is entertained. — Sabine Baring-Gould

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning. — Stephen Jay Gould

The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore." — Stephen Jay Gould

Mr. Lecky had proceeded quickly for several moments before he drew up, shocked. A few more steps and he might have stumbled on his idiot, for the stairs he had been approaching were the front stairs to the silverware department, which he wished to avoid. Shaken by this unpleasant mistake, he re-directed himself, turning back down the center of the dark floor. Certainly he did not want to see the corpse; the corpse could not very well want to see him. — James Gould Cozzens

The only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science. — Stephen Jay Gould

In France, successive waves of Gaul, Visigoth, and Frank have swept over the land and have dominated it. But the fair hair and blue eyes and the clear skin of the conquering races have been submerged by the rising and overflow of the dusky blood of the original population. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him. — Warren Zevon

People are clever, but almost no one ever devises an optimal quip precisely at the needed moment. Therefore, virtually all great one-liners are later inventions - words that people wished they had spouted, but failed to manufacture at the truly opportune instant. — Stephen Jay Gould

My moods are inversely related to the clarity of the sky. — Glenn Gould