395 Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

With copious evidence ranging from Plato’s haughtiness to Beethoven’s tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

The Darwinian revolution is about essence. The Darwinian revolution is about who we are, it’s what we’re made of, it’s what our life means insofar as science can answer that question.

Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these ‘higher’ advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural selection’s causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.

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...

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.

All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again – finally turning into an expectation – then theories are overturned.

In our struggle to understand the history of life, we must learn where to place the boundary between contingent and unpredictable events that occur but once and the more repeatable, lawlike phenomenon that may pervade life’s history as generalities.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as ‘the intelligent layperson’ does exist – in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam – I break in order to reveal.