Stephen Jay Gould

The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring,…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of…

— Stephen Jay Gould

[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

People are clever, but almost no one ever devises an optimal quip precisely at the needed moment. Therefore, virtually all great one-liners…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Most books, after all, are ephemeral; their specifics, several years later, inspire about as much interest as daily battle reports from the…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Anything, even the conceptually most complex material, can be written for general audiences without any dumbing down. Of course you have to…

— Stephen Jay Gould

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

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

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

Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a…

— Stephen Jay Gould

“In Darwins post-platonische werelds is de variatie de fundamentele werkelijkheid en veranderen berekende gemiddelden in abstracties. We blijven echter de voorkeur geven…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

Heydrich, Eichmann, and company therefore invoke the usual trick of argument for breaking a true continuum that lacks a compelling point for…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs,…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently…

— Stephen Jay Gould

I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized.

— Stephen Jay Gould