The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner.

Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.

Life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense-only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be simple.

In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw, interpolated nothing, and read the record of the rocks directly.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview.

The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.