Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

In science, `fact` can only mean `confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.` I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.