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" Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. "

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" At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation. "

Stephen Jay Gould

History

Through

Time

" The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light. "

" We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction. "

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

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

" Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors. "

" 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. "

" We pass through this world but once. "

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

" Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition. "

" Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion. "

" A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished. "

" 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. "

" In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. "

" Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences. "

" The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis. "

Stephen Jay Gould

Important

Hopes

" I think there have to be Bachs and Beethovens. We may have - there are so many more people. Musical training is available to so many more, but it may be that we've hit a right wall in terms of accessible styles and since we demand innovation as a criterion of genius, there may not be more innovative styles to be found. "

" When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. "

" Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty. "

Stephen Jay Gould

Dangerous

Innovation

" Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense. "

" 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. "