Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

With science becoming far more accessible to all of us, I've become a pretty avid reader and devourer of it. One of the objectives that I had working with Fringe was to get more people talking about it because it's such fun.

One of the things that really worries me, in part about Mexico, in part about Latin America, and in part about the Hispanic population in the U.S. and Canada. It's the lack of awareness of this whole science world.

The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.

If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds - film and science.

I'm a great believer that scientists should spend as much time as possible explaining, and you do explain in the process of teaching.

Anything that promotes a kernel of science, even though it's exaggerated and hyped by Hollywood, I think is a step forward. We in the ivory tower ultimately have to realize that in some sense we have to sing for our supper.

The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science.

Science shouldn't be just for scientists, and there are encouraging signs that it is becoming more pervasive in culture and the media.

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent.

I think science is a foreign land for many people, so I think of my role as an ambassador's job.

It is entirely possible to present science accurately and have a hit show.

We have to change the way people look at scientists. Today, they are the nerds, the geeks. Instead, we want some of the cool kids to say, 'Hey, this is all right.'

We have been talking about public engagement for a decade. For me it is about recognising that the mission of science has to be embedded within our culture - the direction in which science is going has to be determined by all of us, and so we need a dialogue with the public.

Scientists aren't necessarily good communicators, because they aren't trained to be good communicators.

As long as we continue to invest in good content that increases excitement about and understanding of science, we're on the right side of this fight, and I have no problem at all stealing from the toolbox of the clickbaiters.

I'd love to present a popular science programme because it's something I feel very passionate about.

Science is not finished until it is communicated.

Science is too important not to be a part of popular culture.

In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.

I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills on the businessman's special to Tokyo.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment.

A lot of people view science as dull or boring, and I think the stance we take, using humour, not taking ourselves too seriously... I think people enjoy that. I think it's quite refreshing.