The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

- 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 a…

- Stephen Jay Gould

Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

- Stephen Jay Gould

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to…

- 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

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

- Stephen Jay Gould

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 s…

- Stephen Jay Gould

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not f…

- 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…

- Stephen Jay Gould