“Bacteria represent the world's greatest success story. They are today and have always been the modal organisms on earth; they cannot be nuked to oblivion and will outlive us all. This time is their time, not the “age of mammals” as our textbooks chauvinistically proclaim. But their price for such success is permanent relegation to a microworld, and they cannot know the joy and pain of consciousness. We live in a universe of trade-offs; complexity and persistence do not work well as partners.”

— Stephen Jay Gould, book Eight Little Piggies

"An Earful of Jaw", p. 98
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

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Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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Stephen Jay Gould274

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