Quotes About Adaptation

She and Jon had been startled and a little frighented by his misery. What happened when you were married, she realized, was that, although you began as two independent people, you eventually grew in certain ways to accommodate your partner's weaknesses and let other parts of you atrophy in deference to his strengths. It was a fine system as long as it endured, but if you extricated yourself from it you couldn't help but be, a least for a time, deformed.

Lose your balance for a moment and there you go, the world flings you off its spinning surface and its not so easy to scramble back on.

Die Mauern aus Feldsteinen, die Dächer aus gebrannten Ziegeln, von Maurern gemauert, nicht von Architekten entworfen. Sie kannten die Winde – jedes Haus eine Festung gegen die Überfälle des Mistrals –, kannten die barmherzige und die unbarmherzige Sonne, kannten den Regen und kannten jene, für die sie bauten.

My brother gave me his Pinto, but he neglected to tell me one thing: It doesn't handle well on pavement.

Someone needs to drag you kicking and screaming into this century.

Cdo gjë ndryshon. Edhe në grahmat e fundit sikur të jesh, duhet të mundohesh t'ia nisësh nga e para. Por ajo që bëhet, nuk mund të zhbëhet më. është njëlloj si uji që, kur e përziejmë me verë, nuk mund ta marrim dot më mbrapsht.

a time when the plans and ideals that you've been dreaming of for years come up against reality. you graduate from college and have to find your way in the real world. you learn that there is no perfect job. there is no perfect relationship.

While all living things affect the evolution of other living things simply by virtue of trying to stay alive, humans interact with the biological evolution of other species in a much more complex and powerful fashion because of one ability: language. Nothing occurs on the human scale without language. No language means no agriculture, no animal farming, no science.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. —Golda Meir

Vonnegut exposes the assumption that if we do change biologically, we typically think we will end up smarter in the terms in which we consider ourselves smart today. But to survive means only that we'll be smart in the context of the environment we find ourselves in. If we continue to exist, we will by definition be smarter than the versions of us that did not survive, but that intelligence won't necessarily be comparable to what we have today.

There is evidence from ancient DNA that lighter skin, hair, and eye pigmentation was strongly selected for in Europe in just the last five thousand years.

The serious readers are usually people who have swerved off course in their own first acts—who have gone through major changes in their lives.

Ainsi, si un élément de réalité contredit l'une de mes croyances, je peux assimiler (déformer la réalité pour la faire cadrer avec mes croyances) ou accommoder (modifier ma croyance pour intégrer la réalité).

Change is tough, people don't like it, but it is necessary. Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

Some things shape you for the long haul, he reflects, no matter what twists and turns your life may take.

The success of Flyaway Holidays was propelled by his uncompromising belief in giving people what they wanted when they travelled abroad, viz: exactly the same things they got at home, but with better weather.

We know that we will never confront the exact same circumstances as previous revolutions. But we should also know that certain problems are persistent ones and that if we can't say what we would have done in the past we should not expect people to think much of our ability to face the future.

Revolutionary situations do not present themselves to us only after we have made perfect preparations for them. They arise suddenly when the old order is unable to maintain its rule.

If any lesson from war is to be learned, John, it must be always to prepare for the unexpected and face the unthinkable.

True surrender is giving up an old way for a new way.

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.

Celý život jsem d?lal stranického funkcioná?e, a te? abych si hledal práci?

I used to be driven, but I pulled over.

At a certain point, it seems more polite to just become the person people assume you to be.