Stephen Jay Gould Details Quotations

Details are all that matters; God dwells in these and you never get to see Him if you don't struggle to get them right.

Nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail.

Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.