A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.

Stephen Jay Gould

Quote Topics

Accidents Capable Complexity Construction Creature Drive Evolutionary Expected Glorious Mode Necessary Own Principles Process Produce Results Understanding Unpredictable Yearn

Quote Author

Stephen Jay Gould
American - Scientist
September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002

We need merely understand that the evolutionary process is neither random nor determined but creative. It follows the general pattern of all creativity. While there is no way of fully understanding the origin moment of the universe we can appreciate the direction of evolution in its larger arc of development as moving from lesser to great complexity in structure and from lesser to greater modes of consciousness. We can also understand the governing principles of evolution in terms of its three movements toward differentiation, inner spontaneity, and comprehensive bonding.

Thomas Berry

Autonomy is the capacity to act on principles that are one's own and one will exercise this capacity by means of a process of rational reflection on these principles. Autonomy is thought to be necessary for attributing political responsibility.

Alison Assiter

For the infinite glorious Creator of all things, to become a creature, is a mystery exceeding all human understanding.

John Flavel

Innovation is an evolutionary process, so it's not necessary to be radical all the time.

Marc Jacobs

It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.

Herbert Read

Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.

Michael Crichton

The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.

John Cleese

It's a real triumph taking a painting out from a pit-hole with a loose and open approach. Some aspects in its favour are those strange accidents that can produce amazing results.

Bill Vaughan

There's a theory of accidents that I studied when I was making a film about nuclear weapons: you can never eliminate accidents, because the measures you introduce to prevent accidents actually produce more accidents. That's certainly true of this sport; you're flying over 40 feet of what might look like snow, but it's hard as ice, it's as hard as pavement. You're doing acrobatic spins and tricks, 40 feet above pavement, essentially. There's been more accidents since, and there are going to continue to be more accidents, that's the nature of the sport.

Lucy Walker

The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.

Andy Goldsworthy

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

You do not fail in life, you only produce results, and you have the right to learn and grow from any results that you produce.

Wayne Dyer

The struggle through the grief was a huge growing process for me. There were gifts that came from it. I learned a lot about myself. I got into a mode very much like my father's own mode of seeking - seeking solutions, seeking teachers, seeking information - to try to alleviate my own suffering.

Shannon Lee

Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny.