Quotes About Adaptation

People can change, but systems cannot without losing their structural integrity.

The earth might move, but human nature only accepts the move when it suits human purposes.

The four most dangerous words in investing are: "this time it's different."

Copernicus took us out of the centre of the solar system; we now need to take ourselves out of the centre of the biosphere."52

To survive, life has to win every day. Death has to win just once. A small error or miscalculation can wipe out all the successes. The negativity bias is adaptive, the term biologists use for a trait that improves the odds of survival for an individual or a group.

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message

There are two categories of people when it comes to extreme situations," said the leopard specialist Vasily Solkin. "One gets scared first and then starts thinking; the other starts thinking first and gets scared after the fact. Only the latter survive in the taiga.

But whence came the race of man? I will make a guess. A change of climate killed the great northern forests, Forcing the manlike apes down from their trees Ã¢â'¬Â¦ They had to go down to the earth, where green still grew And small meats might be gleaned. But there the great flesh-eaters, Tiger and panther and the horrible fumbling bear and endless wolf-packs made life A dream of death. Therefore man has those dreams, And kills out of pure terror.

When we look at nature, we are only looking at the survivors. STEPHEN BUDIANSKY, If a Lion Could Talk

The possibilities were too varied to allow reasonable planning.

She thought the old April might be struggling to get through the creature she had become.

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Can we survive technology?

Natura non facis Saltus.

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stiff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they have always been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

Step down, pilgrim. Take a look

Ya about the same time you grow a third set of teeth.

Yup. The end of a way of life. Too bad. It's a good way. Wagons forward! Yo!

Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.

If there was only the "right" way to do something, Fosbury would never have flopped

Se un libro cambia è soltanto perché siamo cambiati noi e lo affrontiamo in modo diverso.

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children now I have six children and no theories.

My eyesight is not nearly as good. My hearing is probably going away. My memory is slipping too. But I'm still around.