Adapted Quotes - Page 8

• Sundry manifestations of nature in men and women, are greatly perverted by existing social conventions upheld by both. There are feelings which, under our predatory régime, with its adapted standard of propriety, it is not considered manly to show; but which, contrariwise, are considered admirable in women. Hence repressed manifestations in the one case, and exaggerated manifestations in the other; leading to mistaken estimates.

  Herbert Spencer

  Men, Feelings, Social

  HERBERT SPENCER (1874). “THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY”, p.421

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• Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Our World, Perfection

  "The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Only His Wings Remained", p. 54, 1985.

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• Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Law, Wicked, Criminals

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• Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Past, Quirky

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, “Let’s do things differently.” The majority didn’t wake up and say, “Oh, let’s just free the slaves.” ... Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people — usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time — had a better idea and articulated another way. That’s simply how evolution works; it’s the mutation — the member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they’re better adapted for survival.

  Marianne Williamson

  Ideas, People, Survival

  "Marianne Williamson on Consciousness, Women and Politics". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 9, 2012.

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• The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members.

  Walter Lippmann

  Home, People, May

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• A natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.

  Hippocrates

  Perseverance, Art, Reflection

  Hippocrates (1941). “Selected works”

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• Whence it is evident that the remedy must be adapted to the particular cause of the mischief; consequently, the cause must be ascertained, before the remedy is devised.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Causes, Mischief, Remedy

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.336

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• Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England

  Washington Irving

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

  Washington Irving (1829). “The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. [pseud.] ...”

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• Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society.

  Emma Goldman

  Training, Atheism, Christianity

  Emma Goldman (1913). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• I suppose that literature as it is won't die, science fiction included. But games are becoming an extremely important part of the science fiction world, including games that are adapted from books (or vice versa: books that are adapted from games). It's wonderful to have the opportunity to play and see your favorite characters on the screen, but the opportunity to read a book does not become less attractive.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Book, Character, Opportunity

  "Watching The Watches: An Interview With Sergei Lukyanenko". Interview with Nicholas Seeley, strangehorizons.com. November 28, 2011.

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• More birds have adapted to a changing world than have failed. Very few have the narrow tolerance of the ivory-billed woodpecker or the Bachman's warbler.

  Roger Tory Peterson

  Ivory, Bird, Tolerance

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• The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Simple, Average, Atheism

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• The coldest growing seasons of the future [will be] hotter than the hottest of the past. Is agriculture adapted to that? I don't know. Can fish play the piano?

  Cary Fowler

  Motivation, Inspiration, Past

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• The Buccaneers was an Edith Wharton novel, and she never finished it, and a screenwriter adapted it for television.

  James Frain

  Television, Buccaneers, Novel

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• Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Writing, White, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Mary Gaitskill from May 15, 2012

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• Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.

  Andrew Weil

  Years, Perfect, Would Be

  "Why Plants Are (Usually) Better Than Drugs" by Dr. Andrew Weil, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2010.

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• I didn’t and don’t want to be a ‘feminine’ version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.

  Joanna Russ

  Hero, Special, Want

  Joanna Russ (2010). “The Female Man”, p.134, Hachette UK

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• The first play I wrote was called 'Twenty-five.' It was played by our company in Dublin and London, and was adapted and translated into Irish and played in America.

  Lady Gregory

  Play, America, Twenties

  Lady Gregory (1909). “Seven short plays”

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• It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.

  Meg Wolitzer

  People, Way

  Meg Wolitzer (2008). “The Ten-Year Nap”, p.381, Penguin

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• I don't have to be that gentleman ["baddest man on the planet"] anymore. Now I have to be "this" guy. And in order to be "this" guy, I have to be smiling, I have to be gregarious, I have to be entertaining, and I have to be friendly. This is what my career needs now. I've adapted. But 20 years from now, I may need a different persona.

  Mike Tyson

  Men, Order, Years

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• I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas and seasonally lived in New Orleans and Boston. Given that this was all at a tender age, I imagine I was very impressionable. I was a kid that was always moving, city to city, school to school. I adapted easily wherever I was, I knew how to blend.

  Aeriel Miranda

  Moving, School, Kids

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• The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process.

  William A. Dembski

  Serendipity, Survival, Meat

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• The sight of a child…will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons — longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.

  Carl Jung

  Children, Sight, Personality

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

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• Reading is one of the true pleasures of life. In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged,adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Book, Reading, Mass Culture

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