Quotes About Adaptation

What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?

Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand. Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation -- teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience.

Desert strategies are useful: In times of drought, pull your resources inward; when water is scarce, find moisture in seeds; to stay strong and supple, send a taproot down deep; run when required, hide when necessary; when hot go underground; do not fear darkness, it's where one comes alive.

I didn't want Mother to come … I needed to live my own life and not be inhabited by hers. But when she came to visit, we transformed ourselves into doves cooing and coddling each other as we walked and talked in the park for hours, Mother and I adapted to each other anywhere and everywhere each time we were together.

In the desert, success is the understanding of limits. One false move and you die. You can't talk your way out of thirst. Bare skin burns. Face-to-face with a spitting rattlesnake, the only thing you have to negotiate is your escape. There are rules in the desert. Pay attention. Adapt or parish.

Life is a series of complications. We have to deal with each one as it comes.

Do not try to force yourself back into this old life. It is like trying to fit into a pair of old trousers once you have grown taller. It no longer suits you. It never will again. It is best to admit this, lest you force the fit and look ridiculous. Better for the pants, better for you, better for all who would see you wear them.

Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth simply opens up to the rain and soaks it all in.

teacher, to help us not fall back into the past. We

Life is a river," he once told me, "and we all have to find a boat that floats.

What had been urban and cosmopolitan in old Burma had vanished. And what was modern in the new Burma was alien. When the British quit and the Indians were forced to go, only village Burma would remain.

if I am failing in my teaching, my correction will likely fail as well.

Think about it: if I'm sure I'm right, there is little hope of seeing where I am failing. So I keep trying the same old things—the same lectures, for example, and the same punishments. And I keep getting the same outcomes: others with problems. On the one hand, I hate it, but on the other hand, I get my justification, which is what I most want when I'm in the box. My need for justification blinds me to all kinds of possibilities. Even to the obvious ones.

Would our organizations be better off if all of us were to turn outward in our work with each other? Yes. But this preferred state can be reached only if some are willing to change even when others do not—and to sustain the change whether or not others reciprocate.

Ask yourself the following questions: Have I (or we) thought this through with an outward mindset? Do I understand the needs, objectives, and challenges of those involved? Have I adjusted my efforts in light of those issues? And have I been holding myself accountable for my impact on these people? Have you considered what mindset-level changes might be necessary in addition to behavioral changes?

To Be young is to be always ready to give up what we are in order to become what we must be. To be young is never to accept the irreparable.

Seek to do what is easy, comfortable and familiar and you will stay right where you are, bound to the past and bound to all the deceptions that have plagued you in the past, unable to proceed, unable to advance, unable to learn and unable to accomplish what you came here to accomplish.

Whole branches of Judaism may wither and fall, but the trunk remains

Practical' people are as a rule nothing more than men sunk into the groove of daily routine, unable to emerge from a narrow circle of antiquated ideas.

Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.

It's very confusing, being all of yourself. You'll find it quite uncomfortable for a while. But you'll get used to it. We all do.

Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens.

In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future. —Walt Disney

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs, Yet, like a tree, endure the shift of things.