Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

If you don't have a real stake in the new, then just surviving on the old - even if it is about efficiency - I don't think is a long-term game.

To sustain longevity, you have to evolve.

It is good to have competition because that helps you survive in the long run.

I've stood the test of time, weathered a lot of storms and hurdled a lot of obstacles.

GE is 130 years old because it keeps changing and evolving.

You know, you don't get to survive that long without making some compromises.

The plant is blind but it knows enough to keep pushing upwards towards the light, and it will continue to do this in the face of endless discouragements.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

When you've been around a snake long enough, you learn how to crawl in the dirt.

If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.

Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.

Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors.

The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

Life is an error-making and an error-correctin g process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive.

In order to survive, all systems must evolve by providing greater and greater access to the currents that flow through them. This applies to all physical, biological and social systems that survive and thrive.... But let’s take that one step forward... the systems just described are ... constantly evolving. This suggests another design principle: ... design for evolution rather than creating a static design optimizing for the present.

People ask me how come you've been around so long. Well, it's through playing the part of Mr Average Joe American.

the natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. strangely enough it all works out in the end... it's a mystery.

Nature will not let us stay in any one place for too long. She will let us stay just long enough to gather the experience necessary to the unfolding and advancement of the soul. This is a wise provision, for should we stay there too long, we would become too set, too rigid, too inflexible. Nature demands change in order that we may advance.

To survive you have to withstand the changes in the business. This business has gone through so many changes since I was young and now it is on to something else. It is all weird today, for me, because I am from the old times. You just have to keep adapting. Isn't that Darwinism? The creature that adapts to its environment survives.

A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face.

Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.