Quotes About Adaptation

The more unstable the economy and the more rapid the rate of change—the more urgent the need for large numbers of self-esteeming individuals.

Today one needs an education. One needs formal training. Or else one needs to be extraordinarily gifted at self-education. And one needs to understand that the process can never stop, because new knowledge begins to make one's training obsolete almost as soon as one completes it.

Freedom means change; the ability to manage change is at least in part a function of self-esteem.

When we expand the boundaries of our ability to cope, we expand self-efficacy and self-respect.

Once we see that living up to our standards appears to be leading us toward self-destruction, the time has come to question our standards rather than simply resigning ourselves to living without integrity.

A clinging to the past in the face of new and changing circumstances is itself a product of insecurity, a lack of self-trust. Rigidity is what animals sometimes manifest when they are frightened: they freeze.

Able to manage change. Self-esteem does not find change frightening, for the reasons stated in the preceding paragraph. Self-esteem flows with reality; self-doubt fights it. Self-esteem speeds up reaction time; self-doubt retards it.

But remember: "Accepting" does not necessarily mean "liking." "Accepting" does not mean we cannot imagine or wish for changes or improvements. It means experiencing, without denial or avoidance, that a fact is a fact.

I thought: Freedom means change; the ability to manage change is at least in part a function of self-esteem. Sooner or later, all roads lead to self-esteem.

The first step towards change is awareness, the second step is acceptance.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.

Human nature will not nourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil.

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life.

La razza umana, come ogni altro seme, non prospera rigogliosa, se trapiantata nello stesso terreno troppo a lungo sfruttato.

A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married state.

Homeless as he had been,-continually changing his whereabout,and,therefore,responsible neither to public opinion nor to individuals,-putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to be soon shifted for a third,-he had never violated the innermost man but had carried his conscience along with him.

To live and imagine. That's the job left for those of us who've survived.

A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people's evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.

Wailing that the sky is falling does nothing to stop it.

Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.' That about sums up my whole life, doesn't it?

We'll never be ready. So I guess that means we're as ready as we'll ever be.

does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?