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
Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology. — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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)
![“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/quotes/img-quotes/44c/stephen-jay-gould-885_chosen_can-i-pay-any-higher-tribute-to-a-man-ge_2067310.jpg)
![“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/quotes/img-quotes/eac/stephen-jay-gould-885_collecting_mary-anning-is-probably-the-most-importa_786033.jpg)
