Any decent writer writes because there's some deep internal need to keep learning.

Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

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.

Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without us.

A 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.

... 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.

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.