Quotes About Adaptation

Yet I myself am a discontinuous being, not what I was meant to be, no longer what I was.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before.

It was on the Wednesday after the great storm that Mr. Geronimo first noticed that his feet no longer touched the ground.

Unfortunately life has a way of sidetracking one's greatest ambitions. Painters, would-be artists, end up whitewashing walls. Sculptors are forced to design toilets. Writers become critics or publicists. Archaeologists, like myself, can become gravediggers.

Efendilerinizi deÄŸiÅŸtirmek için giysilerinizi deÄŸiÅŸtirin.

And look at the stains on the carpets, janum; for two months we must live like those Britishers? You've looked in the bathrooms? No water near the pot. I never believed, but it's true, my God, they wipe their bottoms with paper only! …

El emigrante, por el contrario, puede prescindir totalmente del viaje; no es más que un mal necesario; lo que importa es llegar.

Alles is strategie. Dat is de wijsheid van de spin. Alles is voedsel. Dat is de wijsheid van de haai.

This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin. (Once

Sus piernas terminaban todavía en aquellas lamentables pezuñas, y los cuernos de su frente eran tan agudos como antes...».

The question of essences remains at the heart of the adaptive act; how to make a second version of a first thing, of a book or film or poem or vegetable, or of yourself, that is successfully its own new thing and yet carries with it the essence, the spirit, the soul of the first thing, the thing that you yourself, or your book or poem or film or your mango or lime, originally were.

Time passes. Big men dwindle, small men grow. This man shrinks into old age, those men's reach grows longer. They can stretch out their arms and touch places and people they couldn't reach before. There are companies here to lend assistance to companies there, to facilitate journeys, to execute strategies. Clowns become kings, old crowns lie in the gutter. Things change. It is the way of the world.

If the old refused to die, the new could not be born.

negative feedback is good medicine for a company even when it is unfounded.

My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its problems. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.

Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment.

In adaptive terms, belief has been extraordinarily useful. It is, after all, by believing various propositions about the world that we predict events and consider the likely consequences of our actions. Beliefs are principles of action: whatever they may be at the level of the brain, they are processes by which our understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world is represented and made available to guide our behavior.

Over 99 percent of the species that ever walked, flew, or slithered upon this earth are now extinct. This fact alone appears to rule out intelligent design.

Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all—and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature.

The sea squirt—a very simple marine creature—swims about during its juvenile phase looking for a place to settle, and once it settles and starts filter feeding, it digests its own brain, because it no longer has any need for perceptual or motor competence. This is often used as an unkind analogy for getting tenure in academia.

Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.