395 Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

  • Author Stephen Jay Gould
  • Quote

    Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.

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  • Author Stephen Jay Gould
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    Life began three and a half billion years ago, necessarily about as simple as it could be, because life arose spontaneously from the organic compounds in the primeval oceans.

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  • Author Stephen Jay Gould
  • Quote

    Details are all that matters; God dwells in these and you never get to see Him if you don't struggle to get them right.

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  • Author Stephen Jay Gould
  • Quote

    I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them.

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  • Author Stephen Jay Gould
  • Quote

    No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.

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