A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

Stephen Jay Gould

Quote Topics

Aspects Causes Does Exhaust History Include Past Phenomena Possibilities Present Range Realm

Quote Author

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

History does not move by leaps into unrelated novelty, but rather by the selective emphasis of aspects of its own immediate past.

Julian Jaynes

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past - or more accurately, pastness - is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past

Michel-Rolph Trouillot

When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

Christopher Ricks

There is something else that is trying to come through - that lure of becoming - and it does come from the realm of spirit, it does come from the quantum universe, it does come from the great spark that is the threshold of time and history trying to emerge and electrify us.

Jean Houston

Natural science does not consist in ratifying what others have said, but in seeking the causes of phenomena.

Albertus Magnus

The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

Alan Lightman

The next thing to be said about what long-range planning is not, is that it does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the long-range planner is not what we should do tomorrow.

Peter Drucker

Hence, wherever we meet with vital phenomena that present the two aspects, physical and psychical there naturally arises a question as to the relations in which these aspects stand to each other.

Wilhelm Wundt

The past does not define, you the present does.

Jillian Michaels

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.

Thomas Merton

If the selflessness of phenomena is analyzed and if this analysis is cultivated, it causes the effect of attaining nirvana. through no other cause does one come to peace.

Gautama Buddha

Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness." The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.

Martin Seligman

He (David Beckham) does have a huge one, though. He does. You can see it in the advert. It is all his. It is like a tractor exhaust pipe!

Victoria Beckham

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

Leopold Von Ranke

History in Burckhardt's words is 'the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.' The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.