A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?

Stephen Jay Gould

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Am Comforting Compassion Conformity Curiosity Fascination Fundamentally Hopeless Hopes Human Interesting Just Lack More Nature Our Perhaps Solace

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Stephen Jay Gould
American - Scientist
September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002

I am fundamentally an anthropologist and a rationalist. What I say is that human societies are very different from what specialists call 'animal society' because the former have religion.

Rene Girard

The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education, or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities.

Peter Bergen

To possess both wisdom and compassion is the heart of our human revolution. If you have wisdom alone and lack compassion, it will be a cold, perverse wisdom. If you have compassion alone and lack wisdom, you cannot give happiness to others. You are even likely to lead them in the wrong direction, and you won't be able to achieve your own happiness.

Daisaku Ikeda

Beyond the fact that it is a limitless arena for the full play of human nature, there is no sure accounting for golf's fascination... Perhaps it is nothing more than the best game man has ever devised.

Herbert Wind

For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.

Anne Lamott

It is a curiosity of human nature that lack of self-assurance seems to breed an exaggerated sense of power and mission.

J. William Fulbright

I am urging Americans to be more careful about the kinds of media we support with our consumer spending. We've got to invest less in the media that glorifies violence and more in entertainment that lifts up the values of love, compassion, and the best in human nature.

Bernice King

Fundamentally, I am all about finding interesting and authentic ways to incorporate nature into most of my designs.

Jeremiah Brent

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

Alice Walker

Our lack of compassion stems from our inability to see deeply into the nature of things.

Surya Das

Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.

Stephen Jay Gould

For the United States, supporting international development is more than just an expression of our compassion. It is a vital investment in the free, prosperous, and peaceful international order that fundamentally serves our national interest.

Condoleezza Rice

Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.

Daphne Sheldrick

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

Paul Krassner

Perhaps the greatest magic of the human spirit is the ability to laugh, at ourselves, at each other, and at our sometimes hopeless situation. Laughter normalized our lives

Torey L. Hayden

Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons.

Peter Kreeft

A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

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