Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure.

Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are almost always...either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change....These are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.

Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma if you're right. And if you're really lucky, you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation.

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end in superstitions.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

Those who ultimately shake up an industry are often outsiders who don't know any better.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

An understandable prejudice of intellectual life leads us to view tilters at orthodoxy as courageous front-line innovators.

New ideas that fly in the face of conventional wisdom of the day are always greeted with doubt and scorn, even fear.

In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things.

In science, it is rare that a transformational change occurs during our lifetimes.

To innovate is not to reform.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

I've always been controversial because I offer new ideas. For me to be controversial, I think this is positive.

To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

While it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge, the best science often emerges from situations where results carefully obtained do not fit within the accepted paradigms.

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.

Look - There's good creepy and there's bad creepy. Today's creepy is tomorrow's necessity.

I've always been interested in people who think out of their time, and I have this passion, actually, for science. I'm just so enormously interested in how, when you think of these revolutionary ideas, other people get threatened, especially if you are different.