Survival Of The Fittest Quotes - Page 2

• I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest... How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth--and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years.

  Jack LaLanne

  Workout, Thinking, America

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• People like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, Ecosystems, People

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• The law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.

  Elihu Root

  War, Men, Law

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• What takes its place is very dry education. And the tools that actually can teach you - singing and playing, learning how to participate with other people, spiritual richness - are replaced with a big emphasis on how to memorize things. That's such an incomplete education. Survival of the fittest used to mean being bigger and stronger.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Spiritual, Mean, People

  Interview with Vickie Karp, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2009.

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• It's survival of the fittest. You can't have everything perfect, that's impossible, but the fit survive. The fit can handle the impurities in the air and in the water, but the poor people who are sick, it really affects them more.

  Jack LaLanne

  Air, People, Perfect

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• Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

  Lily Tomlin

  Laughing, Survival, Should

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• If evolution was worth its salt, by now it should've evolved something better than survival of the fittest. I think a better idea would be survival of the wittiest.

  Jane Wagner

  Thinking, Ideas, Survival

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• The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice--after, of course, perseverance and patience.

  Philippe Kahn

  Perseverance, Keys, People

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• The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

  Herbert Spencer

  Law, Giving, Survival

  "Mr. Martineau on Evolution" (1872) See Darwin 7; Philander Johnson 1; Herbert Spencer 5

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• If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.

  Lily Tomlin

  Thinking, Ideas, Laughing

  "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe". Play by Jane Wagner, 1985.

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• While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Science, Race, Hands

  1889 'The Gospel of Wealth', in the North American Review, Jun.

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• Loyalty cannot be too liberally insisted upon. Altruism in nature remains an exception. It poses a puzzle, being in prima facie conflict with the survival of the fittest and most selfish.

  Peter Birks

  Loyalty, Selfish, Survival

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• The 'survival of the fittest' is beneficently inevitable; the capitalist is powerless against labor, unless the State . . . steps in, and helps him catch and fleece his victims. The old plea of despotism, that liberty is unsafe, reappears now in the mistaken notion that competition is hostile to labor.

  Ezra Heywood

  Competition, Survival, Liberty

  Ezra Hervey Heywood (1985). “The Collected Works of Ezra H. Heywood”

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• When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. . . . It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

  Ty Cobb

  Baseball, Fun, Struggle

  Ty Cobb, Al Stump (1961). “My Life in Baseball: The True Record”, p.280, U of Nebraska Press

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• It is, then, the strife of all honorable men and women of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of the races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and imprudence and cruelty.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Beautiful, Strong, Mean

  "The Souls of Black Folk". Book by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903.

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• There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.

  Steven Pinker

  Mean, Competition, Survival

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• We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

  Mario Cuomo

  Believe, Order, Government

  1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 16 July 1984, San Francisco, CA

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• The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Competition, Survival, Doe

  Diary entry. "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States". Book edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, December 12, 1890.

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• Let us prepare TODAY. For the TOMORROWS in the lives of the nations will be so eventful that Negroes everywhere will be called upon to play their part in the survival of the fittest human group.

  Marcus Garvey

  Play, Preparation, Survival

  Marcus Garvey (2015). “Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey”, p.13, Ravenio Books

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• Nature's stern discipline enjoins mutual help at least as often as warfare. The fittest may also be the gentlest.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  War, Mutual Help, Discipline

  Theodosius Dobzhansky (1962). “Mankind Evolving: The Evolustion of the Human Species”

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• It is clear that 'social Darwinism' and 'survival of the fittest' were intended by Obama to evoke feelings of fear and disgust. It is highly doubtful that Obama knows anything about the history of these ideas, and it is even more doubtful that he cares. A concern for truth is not the coin of the political realm.

  George H. Smith

  Ideas, Political, Feelings

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• I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Expression, Order

  On the Origin of Species, 5th ed., ch. 3 (1869) See Philander Johnson 1; Herbert Spencer 5; Herbert Spencer 6

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• There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

  Peter Watts

  Survival, Alternatives, Adequate

  Peter Watts (2014). “Firefall”, p.222, Head of Zeus

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• Life is about survival of the fittest, and Jersey is producing the master race.

  Janet Evanovich

  Race, Survival, Jersey

  Janet Evanovich (2010). “Four to Score”, p.201, Macmillan

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• Where some people may see loving grandparents, I see a pair of feckless boobs who can't drive, take way too long to shop, and don't even have the most basic grasps on the new technology. As a staunch supporter of the principles of Darwinism, I think that advances in modern medicine are starting to overrule the survival of the fittest, and it's to our [youngers'] detriment.

  Andy Rooney

  Technology, Thinking, Medicine

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