Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.
Stephen Jay GouldA lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.
Stephen Jay GouldThe history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.
Stephen Jay Gould