Quotes About Adaptation

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a "mummified" form.

Their floe, which had once measured a mile in diameter, was now less than 200 yards across.

Thus, while Shackleton was undeniably out of place, even inept, in a great many everyday situations

But since the Endurance was designed to operate in relatively loose pack ice

The rapidity with which one can completely change one's ideas . . . and accommodate ourselves to a state of barbarism is wonderful.

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:The old order changeth, yielding place to new;And God fulfills himself in many ways,Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

Our little systems have their day.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.

The art of progress is to reserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

A car for every purse and purpose.

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a preexisting closely allied species.

On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species 1855

Whether they will or no, Americans must begin to look outward.

European emigrants and their descendants are all over the place, which requires explanation.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

Both flame and spider enrich themselves by understanding the natures of their prey; and fly and moth return again and again until this is accomplished.

Be a child of your times!

Words are themselves organisms, ...

Things can change over time, what looks fixed and pinned and closed in a life can change and open, and what's unthinkable and impossible at one time will easily be possible in another.