395 Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives.

If I don't make it, I'll be very sad that there are things I didn't do, but I'm happy that I've done what I have.

Guessing right for the wrong reason does not merit scientific immortality.

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion

What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.

If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range ...

... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.

All evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence... I had to place myself amidst the variation.

We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.