“Organisms […] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.”

—  Stephen Jay Gould , book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Quick Lives and Quirky Changes", p. 65
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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