Stephen Jay Gould

The abstraction of intelligence as a single entity is still deeply entrenched in the public mind and in the minds of many scientists.

The history of the race and intelligence has been a chronicle of efforts to defame and belittle groups and races.

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

We can learn something important about the nature of science from the history of the intelligence testing movement.

The operational definition of intelligence is a receding chimera.

Biological determinism provides a clean and simple explanation for the status quo, and its very simplicity may underlie its tenacity.

The Mismeasure of Man is a book about the wrong-headed ideas of the past and the wrong-headed ideas of the present.

Those who have a voice in the creation of knowledge have a responsibility to humanity to treat the subjects of such knowledge with respect.

The pursuit of science is more than the pursuit of understanding. It is also the pursuit of equity.

The Mismeasure of Man is an attempt to understand the strengths and weaknesses of this most human of all activities—science.

Prejudice and bias are not restricted to any one sector of society or to any particular group.

The problem with intelligence tests is that they measure something very real, but not what many people think they are measuring.