I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
'Creation science' has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it:… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Creative thought in science is exactly this - not a mechanical collection on of facts and intuition, bias, and insight from other… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science can't tell us what our life means ethically. It can't tell us what we are meant to do as moral creatures.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a paleontologist, in particular, ever since the Tyrannosaurus skeleton awed and scared me. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Why, then, do I continue to claim that creationism isn't science? Simply because these relatively few statements have been tested and conclusively… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read… Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower"… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably)… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
![“Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession and sowed the seeds for its own revision? If Simpson had reached final truth, he either would have been a priest or would have chosen a dull profession. The history of life…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/44c/stephen-jay-gould-885_chosen_can-i-pay-any-higher-tribute-to-a-man-ge_2067310.png)
![“Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/eac/stephen-jay-gould-885_collecting_mary-anning-is-probably-the-most-importa_786033.png)
