What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.

I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology).

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning.

Facts do not 'speak for themselves'; they are read in the light of theory.

Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession and sowed the seeds for its own revision? If Simpson had reached final truth, he either would have been a priest or would have chosen a dull profession. The history of life cannot be a dull profession.

Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and extinction.