Quammen, David Quotes & Sayings

The dodo itself stands as the best emblem of this general truth - that insular evolution often involves transforming an adventurous, high-flying ancestor species into a grounded descendant, no longer capable of going anywhere but extinct. It's our reminder that insular evolution, for all its wondrousness, tends to be a one-way tunnel toward doom. — Quammen, David

Theory in any branch of science entails a risk of detachment from reality — Quammen, David

Insularity plus time yields divergence. — Quammen, David

MacArthur himself was more interested in the similarities among phenomena, because similarities reveal the workings of regular processes ... I've already quoted MacArthur's statement that to do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts. — Quammen, David