Stephen Jay Gould said this quote

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature.

~ Stephen Jay Gould