# Quote — Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life

> All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.

- Author: [Stephen Jay Gould](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould.md)
- Book: [Wonderful Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life.md)
- Page: 136
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Wonderful_Life_(1989)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/all-interesting-issues

## More from this book

> An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.

p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/an-old-paleontological.md)

> The beauty of nature lies in detail; the message, in generality.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-beauty-of-nature.md)

> The divine tape player holds a million scenarios, each perfectly sensible. Little quirks at the outset, occurring for no particular reason, unleash cascades of consequences that make a particular future seem inevitable in retrospect. But the slightest early nudge contacts a different groove, and history veers into another plausible channel, diverging continually from its original pathway. The end results are so different, the initial perturbation so apparently trivial.

p. 320 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-divine-tape.md)