Stephen Jay Gould Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Stephen Jay Gould quotes, Stephen Jay Gould sayings, and Stephen Jay Gould proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent. Stephen Jay Gould
We pass through this world but once. Stephen Jay Gould
Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion. Stephen Jay Gould
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again. Stephen Jay Gould
As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference. Stephen Jay Gould
Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years. Stephen Jay Gould
Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought. Stephen Jay Gould
Nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail. Stephen Jay Gould
The telephone is the greatest single enemy of scholarship; for what our intellectual forebears used to inscribe in ink now goes once over a wire into permanent oblivion. Stephen Jay Gould
Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision. Stephen Jay Gould
No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern. Stephen Jay Gould
Geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied. Stephen Jay Gould
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. Stephen Jay Gould
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. Stephen Jay Gould
A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right. Stephen Jay Gould