Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Life

Quotes about: Life

• Life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense-only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be simple.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Simple, Diversity

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History”, p.322, 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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