395 Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

Even the standard example of ancient nonsense – the debate about angels on pinheads – makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

Consider the magnitude of this... Taxonomists have described almost a million species of arthropods, and all fit into four major groups; one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs!

Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.

If Ediacara survivors had been able to evolve internal complexity later on, then the pathways from this radically different starting point would have produced a world worthy of science fiction at its best.

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution – paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

I will rejoice in the multifariousness of nature and leave the chimera of certainty to politicians and preachers.

The history of life is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity.

The median isn’t the message.