Quotes About Adaptation

Natural selection doesn't "want" us to be happy, after all; it just "wants" us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive.

Bernard Shaw's play My Fair Lady.

Don't violate the law, but don't reject an idea because it's illegal. You might be able to get the law changed.

Sin embargo, se tolera, y se sonríe y se saluda... porque "así es la vida".

Our history consists of the various ways we find to elude the traps that open endlessly before us.

Forget about it," he said. "Sell it to a philosophy quarterly or an urban anthropology journal, or write a fucking script if you want and let Spike Lee shoot the motherfucker, but it's not going to run in any magazine of mine.

You have to change. You have to turn yourself around and change. You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.

Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.

Sometimes it's the sharp, unexpected turns of life that turn out to be our best teachers and ultimately, might just be in your best interest, too.

In some species, females are so successful as prostitutes that they never need to find food themselves.

Not prepared to recognize where, when, or what he is living, the Australian consciously and subconsciously directs his artificial environment to be uncommitted, tentative, temporary, a nondescript economic-functionalist background on which he can hang the features which for the moment appeal to his wandering, restless eye.

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things, for they heed not thy vexation.

the brain's business is not to give us an accurate or objective view of the world, but to give us a useful view - one we can act on

I have had . . . easier days. Although in retrospect, this one is not atypical.

The Eagle wasn't always the Eagle. The Eagle, before he became the Eagle, was Yucatangee, the Talker. Yucatangee talked and talked. It talked so much it heard only itself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the Wolf. The Raven came and said The Wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you'll hear him. The wind too. And when you hear the wind, you'll fly. So he stopped talking. And became its nature, the Eagle. The Eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say.

Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You can't undo yesterday's journey.

Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.

No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be.' " She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him. "Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

Useless to worry until we find ourselves blocked. ... If it happens, then we must simply find a way around it. It may slow us down. But we will never get there at all if we stand still and worry.

much discomfort was based on human expectations. As a man, I expected to be warm and dry when I chose to be. Animals did not harbor any such beliefs. So it was raining. That part of me that was wolf could accept that. Rain meant being cold and wet. Once I acknowledged that and stopped comparing it to what I wished it to be, the conditions were far more tolerable.

A leaf turns in the wind, and you suddenly have a different perception of what colour it is.

Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.

Nothing is really lost. Shapes change. But it's never completely gone.

Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.