Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Every species becomes extinct; at some point, we will go extinct. The question is, as Homo sapiens, are we going to be able to adapt to the change that we're actually part of? We're causing such dramatic changes to the planet, so yes, you do stop and think, 'I wonder where we're headed.'

I believe that the end of things man-made cannot be very far away - must be near at hand.

I'm convinced that the earth is much stronger than us.

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.

I don't think the planet can survive people. It's not the other way around. I don't think the planet can survive.

When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.

Nature knows best.

The human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.

We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.

Look abroad thro' Nature's range. Nature's mighty law is change.

I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't.

In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.

Conservation is not merely a question of morality, but a question of our own survival.

The task for us now, if we are to survive, is to build the earth.

No human thing is of serious importance.

In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.

Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.

I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand

that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.

It's a sad world we live in when a human being leaves so little of a mark that no one even realizes it when he's gone

Environmentali sm is really about seeing our place in world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently - that we are part of nature-utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.

Life is nothing unless death has been faced down.

I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.