Stephen Jay Gould · 352 pages
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“Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“Some fifteen to twenty Burgess species cannot be allied with any known group, and should probably be classified as separate phyla. Magnify some of them beyond the few centimeters of their actual size, and you are on the set of a science-fiction film...”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“Consider the magnitude of this... Taxonomists have described almost a million species of arthropods, and all fit into four major groups; one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs!”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“The history of life is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“Genius has as many components as the mind itself.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
“The idea of decimation as a lottery converts the new iconography of the Burgess Shale into a radical view about the pathways of life and the nature of history. ... May our poor and improbable species find joy in its new-found fragility and good fortune! Wouldn't anyone with the slightest sense of adventure, or the most weakly flickering respect for intellect, gladly exchange the old cosmic comfort for a look at something so weird and wonderful - yet so real - as *Opabinia*?”
― Stephen Jay Gould, quote from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date September 10, 1941
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“Fireheart had been so eager to prove to the Clan that kittypets were as good as forestborn cats, he hadn’t even considered that Cloudpaw might prefer life with the Twolegs. Fireheart loved his life in the forest, but he had chosen it for himself. Only now did it occur to him that Cloudpaw had been given to the Clan by his mother, passed along as a kit before he was old enough to make his own decision.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Rising Storm
“Okay,” I started, “perhaps at this juncture we should discuss our
relationship.”
“Clue in again, Gwen, the reason our relationship is the way it is, is
so I don’t ever have to waste my fuckin’ time doin’ stupid-ass shit
like discussing it.”
Oh boy. Now I was getting really angry.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Mystery Man
“... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, quote from Prep
“I tell you to think black thoughts and you come up with that!?” the lieutenant had screamed. “Is a guinea pig bad? Do you consider a guinea pig the representation of all that’s evil?” “Maybe…if it’s an evil guinea pig?”
― Frank Beddor, quote from The Looking Glass Wars
“The flicker of a girl appeared; a tiny shape with huge, brown eyes I would never mistake, not even in death.”
― Jayde Scott, quote from A Job From Hell
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