The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right.

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms.

How did scientists get money in the past? They were either lucky and independently wealthy, like Darwin, or they had patrons, like Galileo. Universities or governments have become patrons only in the last few generations. Many of the great scientists of the past were in debt to their patrons in the same sense that modern scientists are influenced by what their granting agencies want.

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

The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.