Selection Quotes - Page 6

• Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Saving, Judgment, Virtue

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The Beauties of Burke, Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.59

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• The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.

  John L. Harper

  Science, Theory Of Evolution, People

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• Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these `higher' advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural selection's causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  May, Sides, Benefits

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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• A coach has to worry not so much about creating motivation, esprit de corps, as about destroying it. The true competitor has it; he wouldn't be a star if he didn't. So you have to mold all these egos together and make sure in your selection of people that you don't destroy the feeling of togetherness or morale, because it is a fragile thing.

  Dick Motta

  Sports, Stars, Motivation

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• The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, Science, Men

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• Have good associates or don't associate at all. Be careful in the selection of your friends. If in the presence of certain persons you are lifted to nobler heights, you are in good company. But if your friends or associates encourage base thoughts, then you had best leave them.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Friendship, Height, Good Company

  Ezra Taft Benson (1974). “God, family, country: our three great loyalties”

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• Friends should be chosen by a higher principle of selection than any worldly one. They should be chosen for character, for goodness, for truth and trustworthiness, because they have sympathy with us in our best thoughts and holiest aspirations, because they have community of mind in the things of the soul.

  Hugh Black

  Character, Community, Soul

  Hugh Black (1897). “Friendship”

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• My music has a little hint of down south but I don't have a down south accent. I guess it's just the beat selection that puts me in a down south mind frame.

  King Louie

  Mind, Hints, Littles

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• It does not seem proper to speak of one attribute of God as being more central and fundamental than another; but if this were permissible, the Scriptural emphasis on the holiness of God would seem to justify its selection.

  Louis Berkhof

  Doe, Fundamentals, Holiness

  Louis Berkhof (1996). “Systematic Theology”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.

  Henry Gee

  Memories, Purpose, Variation

  Henry Gee (1999). “In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life”, p.96, Cornell University Press

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• Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind... a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen.

  John Singer Sargent

  Mind, Groups, Sunlight

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• Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

  Kenneth Burke

  Reflection, Reality, Men

  Kenneth Burke, Joseph R. Gusfield (1989). “On Symbols and Society”, p.158, University of Chicago Press

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• Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Clever, Favors, Evolution

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Views, Theory Of Evolution

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• You know, Darwin said through natural selection things go gradually, and he was talking about pigeon's evolution or horses evolving, getting faster. But in fact if you look at evolution on a bigger scale, cosmic evolution and you look at culture evolution you see it jumps, it goes through phase changes, and that's very exciting.

  Charles Jencks

  Horse, Talking, Culture

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• History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  History, Causes, Thread

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• In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is open - ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The prospect that evolution by natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Religion, Atheism, Earth

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• One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Adventure, Science, Simplicity

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• Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

  Bergen Evans

  Wisdom, Given, Meaningless

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• The millionaires are a product of natural selection ... the naturally selected agents of society for certain work. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society.

  William Graham Sumner

  Luxury, Wages, Agents

  William Graham Sumner (1914). “The challenge of facts: and other essays”

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• Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Integrity, Clouds

  Stephen Jay GOULD, Stephen Jay Gould (2009). “Punctuated Equilibrium”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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• That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.

  Robert J. Sawyer

  Facts, Natural, Type

  Robert J. Sawyer (2009). “Calculating God”, p.102, Macmillan

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• Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

  Chauncey Wright

  Life, Moving, Stones

  Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.108, A&C Black

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• The [peppered-moth] experiments show the effects of predation on the survival of the dark and of the normal forms of the Peppered Moth in a clean environment and in one polluted by smoke. The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection--or survival of the fittest--in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston Betularia.

  L. Harrison Matthews

  Dark, Light, Survival

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• Ultimately, of course, you must decide for yourself whether the subjective psychological effects created by your evolved cognitive biases reflect an objective reality, perhaps as evidence that God designed your mind to be so receptive to Him. Or, just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural selection's most successful hoaxes ever-and smile at the sheer ingenuity involved in pulling it off, at the very thought of such mindless cleverness. One can still enjoy the illusion of God, after all, without believing Him to be real.

  Jesse Bering

  Real, Believe, Successful

  Jesse Bering (2013). “The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life”, p.16, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

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