36 Quotes by Simon Conway Morris

Massive self-confidence is boring.

The common ancient ancestor of mulluses and chordates could not possibly have possessed a camera eye, so quite clearly they have evolved independently. The solution has been arrived at by completely different routes.

Pikaia is a missing link because, of all chordates, it's probably the most primitive.

I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn't boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge because intelligence is convergent.

One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high.

As a number of people have stressed over the years, I think it would be premature to assume science itself will explain everything.

Scientists have wonderfully explained the organization of the universe, but that's really all it claims to do, and I think it does that very successfully.

The fact that some things are mysterious or that they touch on mystery isn't in some way a capitulation, and one should realize that there are some things that we may never understand and, to that extent, should be humbled by that.

I think the intellectual consistency of Christianity in historical evidence is frankly overwhelming, but my materialist colleagues regard me as a slightly sad case.