What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that… — 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
The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities… — 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
[E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the… — 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
Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted… — 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
Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far… — 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
If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done… — 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 contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating, second,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If any issue should unite liberals and conservatives, anyone who cares about the integrity of human achievement or respect for human accomplishment,… — 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 Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Image
... 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 Image
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Image
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“[E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry the supposed atheoretical particularism of their anthropological colleagues and argue that all would be well if only the students of humanity…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6a8/stephen-jay-gould-885_animal_e-volutionists-sometimes-take-as-haughty_1877088.jpg)
![“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…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bc5/stephen-jay-gould-885_acts-of-kindness_i-am-not-asserting-that-humans-are-eithe_3109020.jpg)
