Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Mistakes

Quotes about: Mistakes

• The human mind delights in finding pattern—so 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 creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mistake, Lying, Profound

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.199, W. W. Norton & Company

• The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the "liberal" rhetoric of "equal time." But mistake it not.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mistake, Enemy, Intolerance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.276, W. W. Norton & Company

• I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science and nothing can be quite so informative and instructive as a juicy mistake.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mistake, Fossils, Emmanuel

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