Quotes About Adaptation

With or without us, the wild will return. .... It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance. The living world has survived mass extinctions several times before. But we humans cannot assume that we will do the same.

A species of willow developed that does not grow vertically upwards, like it's European and American relatives. To do so would to risk being flattened by the ferocious Artic wind. Instead it grows horizontally, keeping close to the ground. Even in the most favorable circumstances it seldom exceeds four inches in height. But it may become as long as some if it's southern relatives are tall. When you walk across a carpet of such prostrate tree, you are, in effect walking over a woodland canopy.

It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance.

I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.

Already in 2011 the world was 0.8ºC warmer on average than it was when I was born. That is a speed of change that exceeds any that has happened in the last 10,000 years.

We must build bridges to the future, not the past.

Hillary: Live With It' is no rallying cry.

Warren Buffett once put it: "The most important thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.

I love learning new techniques.

Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.

When your only tool is a hammer, so the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.

Translation is another name for the human condition.

Translation is not just one thing; how best to do it depends on what you are doing it for.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.

Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?

You do not even wish to be tortured?" "Well, I admit I had expected something of the sort. But none the less, I will not make a point of it," said Jurgen, handsomely. "No, I shall be quite satisfied even though you do not torture me at all." And

You are either green and growing or you are ripe and rotting." Pick

One of the great paradoxes of social engineering is that it seems at odds with the experience of modernity generally. Trying to jell a social world, the most striking characteristic of which appears to be flux, seems rather like trying to manage a whirlwind.

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.

It was my grandmother who first told me that a woman marries a man in the belief that he'll change but he doesn't -- and a man marries a woman in the belief that she won't change but she does.

Change is vital, improvement the logical form of change.

Success cannot come from standstill men. Methods change and men must change with them.