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Stephen Jay Gould Quotes and Sayings
Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best -
and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Stephen Jay Gould

Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Wisdom Choice Tradition

Stories Quotes and Sayings

Our stories are the window to our emotions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am merely a bit player in your stories,
as you are merely a bit player in mine.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The world just IS, and we all have our stories about it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The "stories" we choose to tell about our past
are never what a video camera would have recorded.
We can tell a sad story or a happy story,
and neither story is either
more accurate or "better" than the other story.
The difference is that one story causes us to suffer,
while the other brings us joy. I choose joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We tell the real truth of our life
by the stories we repeatedly tell.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather

If you have an emotional reaction in the presence of someone,
your heart is telling you that you have
not resolved your issues with them.
In other words, you have not truly forgiven that person.
All of this begs the question, how do we forgive?
First, cease lying to yourself and stop telling yourself stories
about why you behave the way you do.
Stop blaming your behavior on other people
and take responsibility for your emotional reactions.
If you could forgive all the people in your life
who have hurt or wounded you
it would be possible to be in control of your behavior
instead of being in reaction to other people all of the time.
Imagine living life without experiencing
a constant emotional roller-coaster of pain, anger, and jealousy!
That would be bliss!
- Sheri Rosenthal

If you follow the trail of your own
enthusiastically repeated stories,
you will begin to rediscover the things
that invigorate and enliven you.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I forgive myself completely for having created stories of suffering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I confessed recently to an old friend,
"I realized I was looking at you,
in your visit, through old glasses.
Speaking old words.
Telling old stories.
I realize that in my life I've made so many
physical changes and I need to give my spirit time to catch up."
Time for my spirit to look at my friend
through the new glasses of current life experiences.
Old friends are precious.
They become even more treasured when they are wrapped
in the currentness of life experiences
and not relegated to the past in which they once lived.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I forgive myself completely
for having created stories of suffering.
I forgive myself for all
my angers, resentments, jealousies,
and all the other emotions of suffering.
I have unbounded compassion for myself
at all times and under all circumstances.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our Quotes and Sayings

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose one thought over another.
- William James

So divinely is the world organized that every one of us,
in our place and time, is in balance with everything else.
- Adam Acone

Once we doubt ourselves, success slips beyond our grasp.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- Henry David Thoreau

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy

We are injured and hurt emotionally,
not so much by other people
or what they say and don't say,
but by our own attitude and our own response.
- Maxwell Maltz

Everything we say, do, think, and feel
is a product of our personal history
and the collective history of humankind.
Our name for these histories is "prejudice."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Not what we have,
but what we enjoy,
constitutes our abundance.
- Epicurus

We must be our own before we can be another's.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell

To a very young child, mommy and daddy are gods.
We spend our lives looking to regain
that sense of being cared for and protected.
Thus religion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is in our point-of-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we like what we do, if we always do our best,
then we are really enjoying life.
We are having fun, we don't get bored,
we don't have frustrations.
- don Miguel Ruiz

We all go through life bristling
at our external limitations,
but the most difficult chains
to break are inside us.
- Bradley Whitford

If anyone is unhappy, remember that
his unhappiness is his own fault...
Nothing else is the cause of anxiety or loss of tranquility
except our own opinion.
- Epictetus

Feeling overwhelmed by apparent demands on our time
is like going to a restaurant,
ordering everything on the menu,
and complaining about indigestion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Pain is what the world inflicts upon us.
Suffering is our emotional reaction when we fail
to make the difficult conscious choice to choose Joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Do you ever question why our educational system
teaches competition rather than cooperation?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As human beings, our greatness lies
not so much in being able to remake the world -
as in being able to remake ourselves.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

None of us got where we are solely by
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
- Thurgood Marshall

The importance of history is in it's
educational value for our lives today,
not in regret, resentment, or revenge.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Time, like life itself, has no inherent meaning.
We give our own meaning to time as to life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our unhappiness is triggered by either
having less than yesterday,
or having less than our neighbor.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The common denominator of our heroes
is that each set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Belief fuels our decisions -
even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Recovery begins with embracing our pain
and taking the risk to share it with others.
We do this by joining a group
and talking about our pain.
- John Bradshaw

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

We never see Life as it really is.
All we can ever see is the reflection of Life -
distorted by our unique perceptions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Principal Causes of Our Suffering
are Our Expectations and Our Assumptions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
- Henry David Thoreau

Our desires always disappoint us;
for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction,
yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.
- Elbert Hubbard

To live a creative life
we must lose our fear of being wrong.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

The Principal Causes of Our Suffering are
Our Past, and Our Expectations and Assumptions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Heroes act in spite of their fear,
while the rest of us act because of our fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children's future.
And we are all mortal.
- John F. Kennedy

Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious,
and they must be brought into connection with action.
They must be woven together.
- Anais Nin

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners.
That is our permanent state.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.
- Anonymous

What we think, we become.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
- The Buddha

We all live with the objective of being happy;
our lives are all different and yet the same.
- Anne Frank

We CHOOSE our actions, thoughts, and feelings.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is some good in the worst of us
and some evil in the best of us.
When we discover this,
we are less prone to hate our enemies.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our only security is our ability to change.
- John Lilly

My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.
- Robert E. Lee

The human mind is our fundamental resource.
- John F. Kennedy

We live in a wonderful world that is
full of beauty, charm and adventure.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have
if only we seek them with our eyes open.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Life is all in our Perspective.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The universe is full of magical things
patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Eden Phillpotts

We disrespect ourselves and our free-will
whenever we say that we NEED to do something.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Mostly, it is human to dislike surprises -
often with great intensity.
Be open to new ways;
sometimes newness just knocks on our door;
welcome it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We all have our thorns - and blooms.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Exotic or ordinary, glamorous or plain,
exciting or boring - it's all in our point-of-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

At the Core of Our Suffering
are those Self-Imposed Limitations (Assumptions)
of which We are Completely Unaware.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.
- M. Scott Peck

Our relationships live in the space between us which is sacred.
- Martin Buber

Our aspirations are our possibilities.
- Robert Browning

When we come into the present,
we begin to feel the life around us again,
but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding.
We must have the courage to face whatever is present -
our pain, our desires, our grief,
our loss, our secret hopes our love -
everything that moves us most deeply.
- Jack Kornfield

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Today is Your Day to Dance Lightly with Life.  It Really Is.
      - Jonathan Lockwood Huie