Eugene Dubois is no hero in my book, if only because I share the spirit of his unorthodoxies, but disagree so strongly with his version, and regard h… - Stephen Jay Gould

The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.

Substantial changes, introduced during the last half of the 20th century, have built a structure so expanded beyond the original Darwinian core, and so enlarged by new principles of macroevolutionary explanation, that the full exposition, while remaining within the domain of Darwinian logic, must be construed as basically different from the canonical theory of natural selection, rather than simply extended.

We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous.

In other words, the theme of this book—“full house,” or they need to focus upon variation within entire systems, and not always upon abstract measures of average or central tendency—provided substantial solace in my time of greatest need. Let no one ever say that knowledge and learning are frivolous baubles of academic stability, and that only feelings can serve us in times of personal stress.