Adaptation Quotes

“The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.”
― Bruce Lee

“I was persisting in reading my present environment in the light of my old one.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“[I]t wasn't so much the mistakes that people made but how flexible they were in their aftermath that made all the difference in how their lives turned out.”
― Naomi Jackson, The Star Side of Bird Hill

“We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct. We may conclude, from what we have seen of the intimate and complex manner in which the inhabitants of each country are bound together, that any change in the numerical proportions of some of the inhabitants, independently of the change of climate itself, would most seriously affect many of the others. If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this also would seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up, if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would thus have free scope for the work of improvement.”
― Charles Darwin

“All canonical writing possesses the quality" of making you feel strangeness at home.”
― Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

“The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“People see a Macbeth film. They imagine they have seen Macbeth, and don't want to see it again; so when your Mr. Hackett or somebody comes round to act the play, he finds the house empty. That is what has happened to dozens of good plays whose authors have allowed them to be filmed. It shall not happen to mine if I can help it.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Authors on film

“If you accept the situation, you will find strength for strategic adaptation.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Throwing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, you're vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.”
― Reid Hoffman, The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

“Alterations in the environment place us under personal stress. Changes in our routines and the physical, social, cultural, and economic environment forces us to make decisive decisions, we cannot continue our robotic ways. We must adapt to fresh encounters with the peripheral world. Variation in our external domain brings about shocking revolutions of our internal realm of thoughts and emotions.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“How children adapt to available surfaces, using curbstones, stoops and manhole covers. How they take the pockmarked world and turn a delicate inversion, making something brainy and rule-bound and smooth, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to repeat the process.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“We are always people that are in the making, constantly adapting to accommodate the roads we walk. As we learn, it changes us. As we go about our course, we grow, and prune everything around us; friends, beliefs, desires. Our past experiences plant the seeds needed for our future roads, with all its turns, speed, and treachery.”
― Kat Lahr, Nature Of Occurrences

“They did what soldiers always do. They improvised.”
― Geoffrey Norman

“There were three people in my home and I was the only one showing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity and reactivity to the radio frequency transmitting utility meters. For these reasons I did not shield my home and took the route of adapting my body to the toxic electromagnetic environment.”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“Innovators" view failure not as a fatal character flaw but as a learning experience.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“And since a more convincing argument could not be found—aside from a fatal accident or suicide—this way was chosen: a process of galloping senescence.”
― Mircea Eliade, Youth Without Youth

“لأن تقلبات الحياة تكون أقسى منك أحياناً
كن كالماء، يتشكل بحسب الإناء الذي يُسكب فيه دون أن تتغير تركيبته أو تتبدل خواصه أو يتعكر صفاؤه”
― د. نادر الملاح

“Life is ever changing. We can always adapt to the new changes.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Old English, the heart and soul of the old regime at Oxford, ceased to be a required course only as of 2002.”
― Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

“Kiedy nie ma się nic oprócz młotka, wszystko wygląda jak gwóźdź.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“There were times he thought he might not want to live the life he saw before him. It was a life of obstacles and hardships—challenges and tests of will he could not yet predict. But he couldn’t stop. He had to endure. The path had not changed. It was he who had changed.”
― Matt K. Turner, GENESIS

“Forgive, Adapt and Evolve, because holding on stagnates your opportunity of being better.”
― Sachin Kumar Puli

“I have every expectation that cancer will become known as the disease of human evolution trying and failing to adapt to a significantly changed environment.”
― Steven Magee

“The human has genetic adaptation to natural electromagnetic radiation. Increasing, reducing or removing the natural radiation exposures results in a sickened human that may progress onto a diseased state.”
― Steven Magee

“I consider myself fortunate that I spent three years working at 7,775 feet before spending five years working at 13,796 feet on the summit of Mauna Kea. I can only wonder how much more severe my long term very high altitude sickness could have been without the initial adaptation to the lower altitude.”
― Steven Magee

“Cultural change works orders of magnitude faster then genetic change. Stephen Jay Gould”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“Life is ever changing. We can always adapt to the new changes.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The human has no genetic adaptation to modern industrialized products and needs to be careful with prolonged exposure to these for good health.”
― Steven Magee

“If you are living in the electrified wireless west, then you are living a very abnormal lifestyle that your genetics has no adaptation to.”
― Steven Magee

“All of nature was a record of crisis and destruction and adaptation and flourishing and being knocked back down again. What had happened on New Terra was singular and concrete, but the pattern it was part of seemed to apply everywhere and maybe always.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn