Quotes About Adaptation

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

None will ever be true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows...

En la vida hay que acostumbrarse a todo, incluso a la eternidad.

Uno se acostumbra a todo cuando se quiere… cuando se tiene buena voluntad…

Welcome the back talk, because it's completely natural and normal. It's actually a sign that the new idea you've planted in your mind is taking root.

Most jobs I've had have been variations on hunter-gatherer and farmer. I was one of the first to say Hey, if we grow our own food, we won't have to hunt it down all the time. Mostly, I was just tired of moving around constantly, but you have to admit it was a pretty good idea.)

The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you've been shaped by them. That's another law.

Again, I did what I could. I didn't doubt, and didn't deny, that there were people who could have done a better job than me, people with more skill and experience, but I played the hand I was given, dealt with the problem, and the person, in front of me, and at least I felt reasonably sure I was doing no harm.

The only good classification is a living classification.

Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so, And spedde as wel in love as men now do.

People act differently when they're in love with different people. We tend to match our expressed interests and preferences to those of a desired individual.

Our inherited legacy of adaptatios is literally precious. Even the poorest parents give their children vast riches, in the form of senses, emotions, and mental faculties that have been optimized through millions of years of product development.

Language lets us learn about potential mates much more efficiently and interactively than any other species can.

Female adolescents are significantly less fertile than 20-year-olds. Female fertility declines gradually during the thirties, and declines steeply after age 40. Women after menopause are infertile. This female fertility profile is a basic fact of life to which male mate choice systems have adapted. Youth is an important cue of fertility.

Single mothers may have been the norm during most of human evolution, as they were during the previous 50 million years of primate evolution.

Under natural selection, species adapt to their environments. When the environment refers to a species' physical habitat, this seems simple enough. If a species lives in the Arctic, it had better evolve some warm fur. Under sexual selection, species adapt too, but they adapt to themselves. Females adapt to males, and males adapt to females. Sexual preferences adapt to the sexual ornaments avaliable, and sexual ornaments adapt to sexual preferences.

Human penises evolved as tactile stimulators for use in copulatory courtship.

The large male penis is a product of female choice in evolution. If it were not, males would never have bothered to evolve such a large, floppy, blood-hungry organ. Ancestral females made males evolve such penises because they liked them.

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.