Stephen Jay Gould Quotes about Life

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The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

Stephen Jay Gould

Life, Progress, Expansion

Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives.

Stephen Jay Gould

Life, Work, Dedication

Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.

Stephen Jay Gould

Life, Science, Progress

Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.35, W. W. Norton & Company

Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.

Stephen Jay Gould

Life, Integrity, Clouds

Stephen Jay GOULD, Stephen Jay Gould (2009). “Punctuated Equilibrium”, p.83, Harvard University Press

Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession and sowed the seeds for its own revision? If Simpson had reached final truth, he either would have been a priest or would have chosen a dull profession. The history of life cannot be a dull profession.

Stephen Jay Gould

Life, Science, Men