Quotes About Adaptation

I've decided Mom's boyfriends are a lot like U.S. Presidents. You keep thinking they can't get any worse. And then she comes up with a Lance Wescott.

They're constants, aren't they?" ... "Books are. That's why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They're not, of course. Not from the author's first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

it is of the greatest importance that the ego should be anchored in the world of consciousness and that consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation. For this, certain virtues like attention, conscientiousness, patience, etc., are of great value on the moral side, just as accurate observation of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective selfcriticism are valuable on the intellectual side.

His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names.

But what a dreary world it would be if the rules were not violated sometimes!

An intelligent man will make his adaptation to the world through his intelligence, and not in the manner of a sixth-rate pugilist, even though now and then, in a fit of rage, he may make use of his fists. In the struggle for existence and adaptation everyone instinctively uses his most developed function, which thus becomes the criterion of his habitual reactions.

Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and thereby regresses to the past, falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past.

Nature knows two fundamentally different ways of adaptation, which determine the further existence of the living organism the one is by increased fertility, accompanied by a relatively small degree of defensive power and individual conservation; the other is by individual equipment of manifold means of self-protection, coupled with a relatively insignificant fertility.

Interpretation in any given case depends as always on individual circumstances and must be modified accordingly.

Although it is true that everyone orients himself in accordance with the data supplied by the outside world, we see every day that the data in themselves are only relatively decisive...One man resigns himself to circumstances because experience has shown him that nothing else is possible, another is convinced that though things have gone the same way a thousand times before, the thousand and first time will be different.

adaptedness) of the conscious mind by adding to it contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the patient's insights increase, may even thwart his [sheer] ego-tendencies. Like a magnet, the new centre [i.e., self] attracts to itself that which is proper to it.80

Here a critical attitude is justifiable, especially when we consider the oft-repeated observation that the moment of the outbreak of neurosis is not just a matter of chance; as a rule it is most critical. It is usually the moment when a new psychological adjustment, that is, a new adaptation, is demanded.

Though it is a misfortune for a child to have no parents, it is equally dangerous for him to be too closely bound to his family. An excessively strong attachment to the parents is a severe handicap in his later adaptation to the world, for a growing human being is not destined to remain forever the child of his parents.

psychotherapists are familiar with the collectively adapted person who has everything and does everything that could reasonably be required as a guarantee of health, but yet is ill.

Hence it is of the greatest importance that the ego should be anchored in the world of consciousness and that consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation. For this, certain virtues like attention, conscientiousness, patience, etc., are of great value on the moral side, just as accurate observation of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective selfcriticism are valuable on the intellectual side.

Wyomingites, Joe had observed, didn't know what to do when it rained except get out of it, watch it through the window, and wait for it to go away.

the tendency to go native if you stay somewhere too long.

perspective. Related biologically to goats, not antelope (despite their name), pronghorn were uniquely evolved to survive and prosper in

It was easier to stay away and keep a rigid ideology when not mugged by reality.

Hide in plain sight, that was the way out here. He would learn something from that.

We shouldn't automatically oppose everything. I mean, what makes us so fucking smart? We're the beneficiaries of people before us figuring out shit that makes our lives better or helps us live longer. Why stop now, just because we think we know it all?

Coyotes did coyote things.

whenever there is a sunset in front of you, turn around and start shooting what's behind you.