I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments to scientific literacy. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences. — 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
Guessing right for the wrong reason does not merit scientific immortality. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.” — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We are the accidental result of an unplanned process ... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable… — 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
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Some fifteen to twenty Burgess species cannot be allied with any known group, and should probably be classified as separate phyla. Magnify… — 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
I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
How did scientists get money in the past? They were either lucky and independently wealthy, like Darwin, or they had patrons, like… — 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
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
Rifkin's assertions bear no relationship to what I have observed and practiced for 25 years ... Either I am blind or he… — 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
I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“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
True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such… — 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
Theory-free science makes about as much sense as value-free politics. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Scientific questions cannot be decided by majority vote in any case.” — 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
![“[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science.” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/23c/stephen-jay-gould-885_atheism_evolution-is-one-of-the-best-documented_614732.jpg)
![“I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science and nothing can be quite so informative and…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/55c/stephen-jay-gould-885_emmanuel_i-am-particularly-fond-of-emmanuel-mende_1467994.jpg)
![“True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks , one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/28b/stephen-jay-gould-885_age_true-majorities-in-a-tv-dominated-and-an_729797.jpg)
