... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.
Stephen Jay GouldI emphatically do not assert the general 'truth' of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical.
Stephen Jay GouldWe are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universesโone indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.
Stephen Jay GouldEvolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.
Stephen Jay GouldEvolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information.
Stephen Jay Gould