A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Accidents Albeit Anywhere Background Baseball Become Capricious Careers Circumstance Commitment Contingent Destined Eastern Eastern Europe Either Entirely European Family Family Tradition Features Fortunate Inherited Intellectual Jewish Lifelong Locate Major Manner Mentality Mostly My Own Numerous Odyssey Own Purely Same Scientific Serious Set Side Tradition View

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

Every writer owes something to a particular tradition he/she grew up in. But no serious writer - other than the militantly nationalist ones - would reduce his/her domain of influence to a single tradition. Furthermore, historical breaks are so common and large in Europe that there are ruptures in every tradition which then connect the same generations across national borders. Younger Eastern European writers, for instance, have more in common with other writers of the same age in Europe, than with the previous, communist-era generations in their own countries.

Aleksandar Hemon

Utopias and dystopias can exist side by side, even in the same moment. Which one you're in depends entirely on your point of view.

Naomi Alderman

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

James Hillman

There are some religious traditions that view human beings as participants in creation. This is true of the Jewish tradition, from which I come.

Michael Sandel

I embraced Hinduism because it was the only religion in the world that is compatible with National Socialism. And the dream of my life is to integrate Hitlerism into the old Aryan Tradition, to show that it is really a resurgence of the original Tradition. It's not Indian, not European, but Indo-European. It comes from back to those days when the Aryans were one people near the North Pole. The Hyperborean Tradition.

Savitri Devi

I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.

Fred Melamed

Major Trends [is] the canonical modern work on the nature and history of Jewish mysticism. For a sophisticated understanding, not only of the dynamics of Jewish mysticism, but of the exquisite complexities of Jewish history and tradition, Major Trends is a major port of entry through which one must pass.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sort of a bridging figure. I have my Chinese literary heritage and cultural background, so I'm comfortable with these things, but at the same time, I have to navigate the Anglo-American tradition, which has a self-centred view of what Asia and what being Chinese means.

Ken Liu

We have, in this country, this Puritan, hypocritical, nonrealistic view of sex that is entirely different than the view, for instance, in Western Europe.

Michael Avenatti

There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.

Ken Loach

Shambhala is a Buddhist tradition with its own unique view and approach.

Sakyong Mipham

The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought about that because I take the old-fashioned approach of equating tradition with value (which may be a failing). But whatever the case, positive tradition can also provoke opposition if it's too powerful, too overwhelming, too demanding. That would basically be about the human side of wanting to hold your own.

Gerhard Richter

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.

Ailyn Perez

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence -- these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

Albert Einstein

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

Bertrand Russell

A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

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