"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms."
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Source: Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company
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