Quotes About Adaptation

Everyone in this world acknowledges as truth only what is convenient for them. They have no other way of living.

The truth was that when you got married you had to give up one thing after another. It never ended. You had to give up your life—the special one that you were meant to have—and lead some middle kind of life that went where neither of you had ever thought of going, or wanted to go. And you never knew what was happening. You gave up your life and didn't even know it.

Any return to the past, to traditional values, will necessarily be mediated by the present.

Growing into an environment in which everyone else seems bigger and more powerful, every child seeks to gain what they need by the easiest route.

Unlike other animals we are aware of our instincts, and as a result may attempt to shape or control them.

Panic is something that good operations officers plan for.

Confusion is the ally of the prepared

How difficult would it be for these men who had risked their lives to adapt to something

Nails that stuck out often were hammered back into place.

When the French high command had got wind of the German Schlieffen Plan prior to World War I, their reaction had been, "So much the better for us!" That assault had barely ground to a halt outside Paris. In 1940, the same high command had greeted initial news of another German attack with smiles—and that attack had ended at the Spanish border. The problem was that people tended to wed their ideas more faithfully than their spouses, and the tendency was universal. It

drinking water from streams like animals

But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army–Air Force Exchange Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they'd have proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." —Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), mathematician and philosopher

He believes it's time to redesign Evil from the ground up; to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse, rapidly changing society. "He's thinking of calling it," said Miss Gold, "New Evil.

The fact that he hated and feared his new environment was largely beside the point, for he had been taught long ago that what he thought and felt about any given subject was without question the least important thing in the world.

In fact, as they will be delighted to tell you, Taunton is no longer a one-horse town; these days, they have a bicycle as well . . .

If the Good Lord had intended us to crawl, he'd have given us a hundred legs and an exosqueleton.

I'm quite comfortable with making the odd mistake, if it comes in the pursuit of new opportunities and new ideas Rob Fyfe, Air New Zealand CEO

flipping"—changing from one state of mind to another.

That is the surprising, compelling mathematics of innovation: if you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure.

it had expanded in a nice, welcoming way, becoming ever rounder and softer without losing its essential shapeliness

the world she'd been raised to live in no longer existed.

New Orleanians knew how to turn deprivation into an asset; they had the best gallows humor going, they danced at funerals, they insisted on prevailing.

Go with what is. Use what happens.