Quotes About Adaptation

There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism.

Laura began to model herself more and more on those around her; to grasp that the unpardonable sin is to vary from the common mould.

She could not then know that, even for the squarest peg, the right hole may ultimately be found

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

The nineteenth-century clergyman William Barnes preferred wheelsaddle to bicycle and folkwain to omnibus. By the same token forceps would be nipperlings, and pathology would be painlore. Some of his new words recalled the language of Old English poetry: he proposed glee-mote in place of concert, and the wonderful cellar-thane instead of butler.

Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

Our focus should not be on emerging technologies, but on emerging cultural practices.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Anyone wishing to affect events must be opportunist to some extent. The real dis­tinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.

Playing golf is like learning a foreign language.

Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.

The famous sea squirt, beloved of popular neuroscience lectures, in its larval stage is motile and has a primitive nervous system (called a notochord) so it can navigate the sea – at least, its own very small corner of it. In its adult stage it fastens limpet-like to a rock and feeds passively, simply depending on the influx of seawater through its tubes. It then reabsorbs its nervous system – it is no longer needed since the creature no longer needs to move.

wish I were a sea squirt, If life became a strain, I'd veg out on the nearest rock And reabsorb my brain.

I wish I were a sea squirt, If life became a strain, I'd veg out on the nearest rock And reabsorb my brain.

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge

I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy

I have always thought that change you can see and feel is best.

You can still function as a living ruin.

I have come to the idea of rising below and letting the circle run its course. I will no longer fight the wheel inside me. Now I understand the strength of succumbing to the storm, joining the maelstrom, finding power in its turmoil.

He shuffled into middle-age silently and without protest.