Quotes About Adaptation

although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.

Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.

If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.

And yet, strange to say, now that the truth [of natural selection] is recognized by most cultivated people...now more than ever, in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further the survival of the unfittest.

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest. { The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was not originated by Charles Darwin , though he discussed Spencer's 'excellent expression' in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace (Jul 1866) .}

Consumptive patients, with lungs incompetent to perform the duties of lungs, people with defective hearts that break down under excitement of the circulation, people with any constitutional flaw preventing the due fulfillment of the conditions of life are continually dying out and leaving behind those fit for the climate, food, and habits to which they are born....And thus is the race kept free from vitiation.

Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature -- the index of a character unfitted to its conditions -- and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish.

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

Blacks and whites in the South have had to learn to live together in a new way. Up north, they're getting acquainted for the first time.

In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority.

And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?

Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer

Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.

That before living agent, now became the living instrument.

Homo sapiens, you and me, we are basically the same as people 10,000 years ago. The next revolution will change that.

I was interviewing Daniel Craig and Naomie Harris for a Bond film a few years ago, and the moment I sat down, my dress ripped. No more bodycon numbers for me. I had to walk out of the room backwards when I was done.

Nature got it right with the cranes. They have been around since the Eocene, which ended 34 million years ago.

Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.

If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people.

I'd been in a vicious cycle and circle of people and couldn't see my way out. So I picked myself up one day about 15 years ago and moved where I didn't know anyone.

The only thing I do to my bat is put some tape around the handle to build it up a little bit because I broke my finger about six years ago and can't really close it the way I want to. Other than that, the same bat, same Louisville Sluggers.

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.

If you went to your closet today, would you pull out the same outfit you wore 10 or 15 years ago? You wear feelings and faith differently as well.

If we didn't need eight hours of sleep and could survive on six, Mother Nature would have done away with 25 percent of our sleep time millions of years ago. Because when you think about it, sleep is an idiotic thing to do.