Stephen Jay Gould

"Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion."

"We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into limbs for terrestrial creatures."

"The most important evolutionary change may have been the development of consciousness itself."

"Science simply represents an honest attempt to find truth about the natural world."

"Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty."

"Geniuses are people who successfully resist the world's attempt to make them normal."

"We pass through this world but once, so we might as well try to leave it better than we found it."

"Evolution is a process of constant expansion and increasing complexity."

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie but the myth."

"I have always maintained that nothing fundamental separates us from the animals."

"Science can work on questions of fact, but not on issues of meaning and value."

"We should not view evolution as a ladder leading toward increasing perfection."

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediate stages is simply a fact of nature."

"Human consciousness is the highest achievement of evolution so far."

"Nature does not work in discrete jumps but through gradual transformation."

"Paleontology is the study of the history of life inscribed in stone."

"The diversity of life is not a ladder but a bush with many branches."

"Intelligence must be compatible with individual survival."

"Contingency and necessity are the dual engines of evolutionary change."

"We are but one small twig on the great tree of life."

"Science is a process, not a product. It's a way of organizing knowledge, not the knowledge itself."

"The world is full of strangeness and wonder if we only take time to notice it."

"Extinction is not an evolutionary failure but simply an endpoint."

"Species are not discrete units arranged in a hierarchical ladder."

"The fossil record is one of the great achievements in the history of human knowledge."

"Natural selection is a powerful mechanism but not the only force shaping evolution."

"We must learn to read the document of life from the rocks beneath our feet."

"Progress is not inherent in the evolutionary process itself."

"The brain is not a unitary mechanism but a collection of separate neural systems."

"Punctuated equilibrium challenges the idea of constant gradual change."