Humans are here today because our particular line never fractured - never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history.
More Quotes from Stephen Gould:
No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.Stephen Gould
The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning
Stephen Gould
Facts do not 'speak for themselves', they are read in the light of theory
Stephen Gould
They have this absurd notion that something that occurs in the past and that is not subject to direct observation is not provable. That's nonsense .... There is a mystery as to how evolution occurs, but there is not a whole lot of doubt as to whether it occurs.
Stephen Gould
The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start (examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science-or of any honest intellectual inquiry.
Stephen Gould
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.
Stephen Gould
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Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America.
Johann Most
Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.
Maggie Smith