The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.
--
p. 29Carl Sagan
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.”
Stephen Jay Gould
One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Yeah, he talked a lot about what direction he was heading in. I mean, I know what the next Nirvana recording was going to sound like. It was going to be very quiet and acoustic, with lots of stringed instruments. It was going to be an amazing f**king record, and I’m a little bit angry at him for killing himself. He and I were going to record a trial run of the album, a demo tape. It was all set up. He had a plane ticket. He had a car picking him up. And at the last minute he called and said, "I can't come."
Kurt Donald Cobain
[about how the Earth was created] And then there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe it took place in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go "fossil!" And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head.
Lewis Black
In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth's crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts. Their last meal is sometimes preserved in peat or in ice, but their thoughts and feelings are gone.
Jeanette Winterson
Sagan, Carl
Sagan, Francoise
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