Quotes About Adaptation

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lie steady under our hands.

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Some primitive peoples, like the Veddahs of Ceylon, had no dwellings at all, and were content with the earth and the sky; some, like the Tasmanians, slept in hollow trees; some, like the natives of New South Wales, lived in caves; others, like the Bushmen, built here and there a wind-shelter of branches, or, more rarely, drove piles into the soil and covered their tops with moss and twigs.

Intellectualism—the conception of man as above all a thinking animal, consciously adapting means to rationally chosen ends—fell sick with Rousseau, took to its bed with Kant, and died with Schopenhauer.

So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition.

The father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son to be on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents…. The teacher fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors…. The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young….

Social evolution is an interplay of custom with origination.

life must breed.

The Englishman does not so much make English civilization as it makes him; if he carries it wherever he goes, and dresses for dinner in Timbuktu, it is not that he is creating his civilization there anew, but that he acknowledges even there its mastery over his soul.

In agriculture the stick became the hoe; in war it became the lance or javelin or spear, the sword or bayonet.

Society is a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic; and when the past is put out through the door it comes in at the window.

Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do; and you shall live prosperously.

As submissive natures unite with masterful individuals to make the order and operation of a society, so the imitative majority follows the innovating minority, and this follows the originative individual, in adapting new responses to the demands of environment or survival. History in the large is the conflict of minorities; the majority applauds the victor and supplies the human material of social experiment.

La naturaleza ama la diferencia como material necesario para la selección y la evolución;

Generaciones de hombres establecen un dominio creciente sobre la tierra, pero están destinados a convertirse en fósiles en su suelo.

Empedocles (fl. 445 B.C., in Sicily) developed to a further stage the idea of evolution.17 Organs arise not by design but by selection. Nature makes many trials and experiments with organisms, combining organs variously; where the combination meets environmental needs the organism survives and perpetuates its like; where the combination fails, the organism is weeded out; as time goes on, organisms are more and more intricately and successfully adapted to their surroundings.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

But how far has human nature changed in the course of history? Theoretically there must have been some change; natural selection has presumably operated upon psychological as well as upon physiological variations. Nevertheless, known history shows little alteration in the conduct of mankind.

pugnacity, greed, brutality, and sexual readiness were advantages in the struggle for existence. Probably every vice was once a virtue

In the memorable words of Professor Roy Baumeister, 'Life is change that yearns for stability

Because it seems to me that to be human you have to be able to compromise.

What cannot be avoided, must be welcomed.

Isn't this how life turns out, more often than not? It refuses to conform to your needs – the narrative needs that you feel are essential to give rough shape to your time on this earth.