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
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
Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures;… — 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
