Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory.

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.

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

Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion.

Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.

But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.

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