Adaptation Quotes - Page 9

• I think that when you do an adaptation for theater, it's either a marriage or a love affair..and so tremendous is my esteem and affection of many years for Ernest Gaines, there was no question but that I would be a very faithful adapter..which I did do.

  Romulus Linney

  Thinking, Years, Faithful

  7 Copy quote

• Baz [Luhrmann] paid me one of the greatest compliments ever. I don't know him, really, but when I first met him I was congratulating him on ROMEO + JULIET - which I think is a wonderful adaptation - and he said, "Oh, well we couldn't have done it without your RICHARD III, which was an inspiration!" I've never quite checked up on the dates to see whether or if, in fact, we did our film before he did his.

  Ian Mckellen

  Inspiration, Thinking, Done

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Children, it should be repeated, are not pocket editions of adults, because childhood is a period of physical growth and development, a period of preparation for adult responsibility and public and private life. A program of children cannot be merely an adaptation of the program for adults, nor should it be curtailed during periods of depression or emergency expansion of other programs.

  Grace Abbott

  Children, Responsibility, Childhood

  15 Copy quote

• Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Design, Example

  "The Panda's Thumb". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Double Trouble", pp. 38-40, 1980.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Simplicity, Might

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.355, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Law, Theory Of Evolution, Balance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences. When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on," and "tune in.

  Timothy Leary

  Tunes, Robots, Routine

  Timothy Leary (2009). “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”, p.7, Ronin Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mixture of assimilation to earlier schemas and adaptation to the actual conditions of the situation is what defines motor intelligence. But and this is where rules come into existence as soon as a balance is established between adaptation and assimilation, the course of conduct adopted becomes crystallized and ritualized. New schemas are even established which the child looks for and retains with care, as though they were obligatory or charged with efficacy.

  Jean Piaget

  Children, Balance, Looks

  58 Copy quote

• All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

  Herbert Spencer

  Light, Organization, Evil

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed”, p.73

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Repression is an evolutionary adaptation permitting us to function under the burden of our expanded consciousness. For what we are conscious of could drive us mad.

  Camille Paglia

  Mad, Consciousness, Burden

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.44, Canongate Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.

  Fred Hoyle

  Differences, Long, Today

  "Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe". Book by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle (p. 15), 1978.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

  Aleister Crowley

  People, Survival, Victory

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 4, 1969.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Mind, Doe

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

  Octavia Butler

  Mean, Civilization, Groups

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Sower”, p.114, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The challenge in any musical is unifying all the moving parts of it, in particular a movie musical because now you're adding the camera and you're adding the idea of adaptation. So the challenge is to stay as true as you can to the material that you love and yet not be afraid to step outside of it and introduce elements into it that make it exist in a satisfying, exciting way cinematically.

  Marc E. Platt

  Moving, Ideas, Challenges

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.

  Joan Robinson

  Fall, Years, Two

  Joan Robinson (2014). “Contributions to Modern Economics”, p.27, Academic Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the trunk is one but the branches are many, yoga is one but adaptations may vary.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Yoga, Branches, May

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2008). “Astadala Yogamala (Collected Works), Volume 7”, p.252, Allied Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• By separating the function of adaptation from the function of maintaining the integrity of individual genes, sex allows much greater diversity while still keeping genes whole. Sex is not only fun, it is good engineering practice.

  Seth Lloyd

  Sex, Fun, Integrity

  4 Copy quote

• Adaptation is always the same process for me, which is some version of throwing the book at the wall and seeing what pages fall out. It is trying to imagine, remember the story, read it, put it down, and then write sort of an outline without the book in front of you with some hope that what you like about it will be filtered and distilled out through your memory and then that will be similar to what other people like about it.

  Akiva Goldsman

  Wall, Memories, Book

  Source: collider.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves... Nevertheless... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction... and any deeper meaning is illusory...

  Michael Ruse

  Thinking, Hands, Feet

  "The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on Its History, Philosophy and Religious Implications (Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics)". Book by Michael Ruse, 1989.

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adaptation of an extravagant lifestyle. Indeed of the whole realm of Nature the sea is in many ways the most harmful to the stomach, with its great variety of dishes and tasty fish.

  Pliny the Elder

  Food, Sea, Cooking

  9 Copy quote

• More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Mean, Thinking

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends.

  William Whewell

  Mean, Given, Ends

  William Whewell (1845). “The Elements of Morality, Including Polity”, p.157

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  War, Challenges, Environmental

  "UN Expert Urges States to Cut Military Spending and Invest More in Human Development". www.ohchr.org. April 14, 2014.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source