Stephen Jay Gould

The most common error of would-be intellectuals is to assume that a difficult or arcane idea must be profound.

The human brain is the most complex object we have yet discovered in our universe.

Evolution is a theory of organic change, but it does not imply, as many people assume, that life must evolve toward greater complexity.

The world is full of signals that we don't perceive.

The history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.

If there is any purpose or meaning to our existence, we will have to forge it for ourselves.

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.

The fossil record, with its abrupt transitions, offers no support for gradual change.

The cardinal fact of evolution is that no mechanism places organisms in obligatory series of ascending complexity.

Science is not a 'thing' in the world, but a way of learning about the world.

The most vital feature of life's history is the constant reassertion of unanticipated possibilities.

We are not the predictable culmination of a progressive trend, but rather the fortuitous result of countless historical contingencies.

The primary goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the diversity of life, not to provide moral lessons.

The universe is not constructed for our convenience.

The most important lesson to teach our children is that the world is a complex place filled with uncertainty, and that the quest for truth is a never-ending process.

We are the contingent result of an endless succession of antecedent states, not the predictable product of any simple force or progressive trend.