“Science and religion stand watch over different aspects of all our major flashpoints. May they do so in peace and reinforcement--and not… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The Darwinian revolution is about essence. The Darwinian revolution is about who we are, it's what we're made of, it's what our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In our struggle to understand the history of life, we must learn where to place the boundary between contingent and unpredictable events… — 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
“I remember when we found the first population of living Cerion agassizi in central Eleuthera. Our hypothesis of Cerion's general pattern required… — 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
If a man dies of cancer in fear and despair, then cry for his pain and celebrate his life. The other man,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Life began three and a half billion years ago, necessarily about as simple as it could be, because life arose spontaneously from… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The… — 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
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
The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense-only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be… — 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
![“Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/345/stephen-jay-gould-885_accounts_paleontologists-fossil-experts-have-paid_1303150.jpg)
![“The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d9d/stephen-jay-gould-885_causes_the-causes-of-life-s-history-cannot-reso_2283633.jpg)
