Quotes About Adaptation

you can't just move backward. You can't push the chicken back into the egg, wine back into the grape, the boy back into the womb. If you want the baby to let go of your watch, you don't just try to explain that he ought to do it—you offer him something he would rather have.

Lamentarsi è una caratteristica innata della specie umana. Nel Secolo del Carbone la gente imprecava contro la macchina a vapore; in una commedia di Shakespeare un personaggio lamenta l'invenzione della polvere da sparo. Mille anni dopo ci si lamentava per la fabbricazione del cervello positronico.

You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can't always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you've planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable.

He never created a finish product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution.

Earthmen may even rule at Trantor for a generation, but their children will become Trantorians, and in their turn will look down upon the remnant on Earth.

It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration—a stagnation!

Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to the sunlight at one time or another. Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with? And I certainly refuse to change the story to suit their whims.

Life is a successive symphony of losses.

On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.

when the old empire began to rot at the fringes, it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be re-accepted it would have to present itself in another guise

What we gain in the straightaways, we lose in the roundabouts. That's the way the universe works. We've just got to fool it somehow.

What kind of a ridiculous animal are we to be lords of the world after the dinosaurs had failed? Sure, we're intelligent, but what's intelligence? We think it is important because we have it. If the Tyrannosaurus could have picked out the one quality that he thought would ensure species domination, it would be size and strength. And he would make a better case for it. He lasted longer than we're likely to.

Baley needed a friend and he was in no mood to cavil at the fact that a gear replaced a blood vessel in this particular one.

it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be reaccepted it would have to present itself in another guise—and it has done just that. It works out beautifully." "Interesting!" The mayor placed his arms around his

Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who had lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.

Very well. So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.

Para triunfar, el solo planteamiento es insuficiente. También se debe improvisar.»

última parte de la serie…

Gaia is just an extension of the desire for comfort and security extended to an entire planet. What's wrong with that?" "What's wrong with that," said Trevize, "is that my house or my ship is engineered to suit me. I am not engineered to suit it. If I were part of Gaia, then no matter how ideally the planet was devised to suit me, I would be greatly disturbed over the fact that I was also being devised to suit it.

Para vencer, la planificación por sí sola no basta. Uno debe improvisar.

Para triunfar, el solo planteamiento es insuficiente. También se debe improvisar.» Yo improvisaré.

Para triunfar, el solo planteamiento es insuficiente. También se debe improvisar. a

It worked out neatly, yet it had all changed for him, and what was broken could not be made whole again.

Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there's something permanent about things the way they are right now.