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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“Wait. Why am I thinking about Krispy Kremes? We’re supposed to be exercising.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Big Boned
“El dia quedo teñido de negrura y, a partir de entonces, todos mis dias han sido negros”
― V.C. Andrews, quote from Garden of Shadows
“Does that feel better?" she asked, not expecting any sort of an answer but feeling nonetheless that she ought to continue with her one-sided conversation. "I really don't know very much about caring for the ill, but it just seems to me like you'd want something cool on your brow. I know if I were sick, that's how I'd feel."
He shifted restlessly, mumbling something utterly incoherent.
"Really?" Sophie replied, trying to smile but failing miserably. "I'm glad you feel that way."
He mumbled something else.
"No," she said, dabbing the cool cloth on his ear, "I'd have to agree with what you said the first time." He went still again.
"I'd be happy to reconsider," she said worriedly. "Please don't take offense." He didn't move.
Sophie sighed. One could only converse so long with an unconscious man before one started to feel extremely silly.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from An Offer From a Gentleman
“Lost?” I broke in. “Lost how? Lost like you dropped it down the sink, or lost like it walked out the door and ran off into the woods?”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from Summer's Crossing
“The immediate thing that strikes you when you see the inside of the hand is its compactness. The ball of your thumb, the thenar eminence, contains four different muscles. Twiddle your thumb and tilt your hand: ten different muscles and at least six different bones work in unison. Inside the wrist are at least eight small bones bones that move against one another. Bend your wrist, and you are using a number of muscles that begin in your forearm, extending into tendons as they travel down your arm to end at your hand. Even the simplest motion involves a complex interplay among many parts packed in a small space.”
― Neil Shubin, quote from Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
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