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Stephen Jay Gould Quotes about Kindness

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The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

Stephen Jay Gould
Kindness, Ordinary, Human Nature
Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

In what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible.

Stephen Jay Gould
Positive, Kindness, Evil
Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “I Have Landed”, p.393, Harvard University Press

We pass through this world but once.

Stephen Jay Gould
Kindness, Helping Others, Giving
Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.30, W. W. Norton & Company

I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [...] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

Stephen Jay Gould
Kindness, Lying, Usual
"Eight Little Piggies". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness", p. 282, 1993.

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