Quotes About Adaptation

Every time we exterminate a predator, we are in a sense creating a new predator.

once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution.

Our identity is like a kaleidoscope. With each turn we reset it not to a former or final state but to a new one that reflects the here-and-now positions of the pieces we have to work with. The design is always new because the shifts are continual. That is what makes kaleidoscopes, and us, so appealing and beautiful.

The biggest mistake we humans make is to become attached to someone's being a certain way and then to think that will never change.

THE FIRST GIVEN of life is that changes and endings are inevitable for any person, relationship, enthusiasm, or thing. Nothing is perfect, permanently satisfying, or permanently anything. Everything falls apart in time. Every beginning leads to a finale. Built into all experiences, persons, places, and things is a life span. Our relationships pass through phases, from romance through struggle to commitment. Then they end with death or separation.

I believe we have two lives. The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.

fundamental principle of the body's weight-control systems: Impose a change in behavior (for example, by restricting food), and biology fights back (with increased hunger). Change biology, however, and behavior adapts naturally—suggesting a more effective approach to long-term weight management.

There were larger reasons for Walter Whitman's travails. He was a blunt-spoken worker accustomed to honest self-sufficiency in a time when the market was calling for new traits: slickness and self-promotion, with more than a dash of craft. He might love cattle, children, and living under his own roof, but what he needed in the new environment was an eye for the deal.

adjustment is a must.

I saw myself like a piece of wood floating down a river, suddenly tossed against the shore, caught in a stagnant pool.

Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

Seasoned players realized all too well that with the tweaking of a few pieces' powers of motion, it was an entirely new game.

Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine," Viennese player Rudolf Spielmann would later advise. Even

Painting isn't dead. The novel isn't dead. They just aren't as central to the culture as they once were.

Prejudice is a shape shifter. It's very agile in taking forms that seem acceptable on the surface.

Revolutions always appear impossible in prospect and inevitable in retrospect.

Playing to win involves viewing a loss as an opportunity to learn and improve. Getting

the behavior we see as "diminished" in elderly parents, clients, and friends actually exists to do a very specific developmental job.

Curiosity familiarized the cat with its surroundings so it wouldn't be surprised.

the Big Three had shut down their assembly lines to retool from subcompacts to behemoths with tanks measured not in gallons, but Gulf wars.

Time and time again, throughout the history of medical practice, what was once considered as "scientific" eventually becomes regarded as "bad practice".

Bletchley said, sweating freshly in the heat of the bus. 'Some of the species adapt, others don't. In effect, when coal is acquired by wholly mechanical means or perhaps isn't even needed at all, people like Batty and his brothers, and Stringer, won't have a function. And when the function ceases so does the species, or those parts of it that can't recognize or create a further function.

From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.

Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.