The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — 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
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
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
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All… — 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
Antiessentialist thinking forces us to view the world differently. We must accept shadings and continua as fundamental. We lose criteria for judgment… — 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
Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools,… — 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
Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way,… — 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
Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures… — 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
The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it… — 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
Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without… — 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
The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These… — 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
![“[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/aee/stephen-jay-gould-885_age_in-natural-history-great-discovery-often_987347.jpg)
