Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. Wh...”

“We pass through this world but once. 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 imp...”

“We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not b...”

“Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.”

“We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature.”

“We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universesone indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum fr...”

“Bless all the women of this world who nurture our heritage while too many man rush off to kill for ideals that might now be deeply and personally held, but will often be viewed as repugnant by late...”

“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in th...”

“No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Crea...”

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a ...”

“Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information it is a creative human activity.”

“The human mind delights in finding patternso much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small cr...”

“I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mamm...”

“My potential salvation...must remain an unswerving commitment to treat generality only as it emerges from little things that arrest us and open our eyes with "aha" -- while direct, abstract, learne...”

“Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our 'noble' traits as well?”

“There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms -- if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a ...”

“Science tries to record and explain the factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. Th...”

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einsteins brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

“Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.”

“Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.”