“Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few inj...” — Stephen Jay Gould Quote

“Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists”

“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.”

“All evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence... I had to place myself amidst the variation.”

“Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”

“The Nobel prizes memorialize Alfred Nobel's faith in the contribution that human thought, directed to science and art, can make to human welfare.”

“Even before vibrations are detected by its lyriform organs, the web determines which vibrations will arrive at the leg. The spider will eat whatever it's aware of, and it sets the bounds of its awareness--the extent of its Umwelt--by spinning different kinds of webs. The web, then, is not just an extension of a spider's senses but an extension of its cognition. In a very real way, the spider thinks with its web. Tuning the silk is like tuning its own mind.”

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

“It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes.”

“Every scientist is a descendant of”