Selection Quotes - Page 15

• Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

  Herodotus

  Opportunity, Views, Decision

  9 Copy quote

• As a means of variation from a normal type, sickness in childhood ought to have a certain value not to be classed under any fitness or unfitness of natural selection; and especially scarlet fever affected boys seriously, both physically and in character, though they might through life puzzle themselves to decide whether it had fitted or unfitted them for success.

  Henry Adams

  Character, Mean, Boys

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.10, Booklassic

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I still reject lead roles, as I don't accept any role if I don't find it challenging enough. I am very careful while making selections.

  Boman Irani

  Challenges, Roles, Enough

  4 Copy quote

• The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophy, Danger, Chiefs

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was in France that I first learned about food. And that even the
  selection of a perfect pear, a ripe piece of Brie, the freshest butter,
  the highest quality cream were as important as how the dish you
  were going to be served was actually cooked.

  Robert Carrier

  Perfect, Quality, Important

  6 Copy quote

• This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection", or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

  Herbert Spencer

  Life, Struggle, Race

  The Principles of Biology pt. 3, ch. 12 (1865) See Darwin 7; Philander Johnson 1; Herbert Spencer 6

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space.

  Robert Ardrey

  Animal, Space, Competition

  ROBERT ARDREY (1961). “AFRICAN GENISIS”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• High finance isn't burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Art, Finance, Burglary

  9 Copy quote

• One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.

  Bill Nighy

  Compassion, Two, People

  Interview with Sarah Crompton, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 10, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

  Vernor Vinge

  Animal, World, Problem

  8 Copy quote

• It’s a shame, sort of a waste, that most people are influenced by what the newspaper supplements tell them is the book they are meant to be seen reading this year. It seems like those people aren’t really interested in books. If you’re really into books, you havoc all over the place picking up disparate stuff which you devour hungrily, and the ‘selection’ process is more like a sixth sense hunger, a billion miles away from fashion.

  Steve Aylett

  Fashion, Book, Reading

  4 Copy quote

• Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature....Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.

  Michael Denton

  Theory Of Evolution, Able, Natural

  24 Copy quote

• Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time.

  Steven Pinker

  Design, Evolution, Natural

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.158, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Eye, Energy, Example

  4 Copy quote

• Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

  James Madison

  Men, Ideas, People

  James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.24, University of Virginia Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Office, Aristocracy

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.62, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We've created a community and these images [from Vogue] will live on with exhibitions, postcards, projections. We help them gain more exposure. Instagram already works as a selection. It's my curiosity into the world of youth, what they do, what they buy.

  Franca Sozzani

  Community, Curiosity, Gains

  Source: wwd.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet-all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

  Florence Nightingale

  Health, Nursing, Light

  Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2004). “Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.31, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.

  Peter Watts

  Fighting, Skin Tone, Skins

  Peter Watts (2014). “Firefall”, p.92, Head of Zeus

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

  Richard Dawkins

  Trying, Want, Imagine

  "Darwin’s Dangerous Disciple". Interview with Frank Miele, www.skeptic.com. 1995.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined.

  Miguel

  Beautiful, Succeed, Defining

  13 Copy quote

• We live in a cultural milieu ... The idea that culture is our ecological niche is still applicable. The impact and force of natural selection on the human physique are conditioned by the dimensions of culture.

  C. Loring Brace

  Impact, Ideas, Culture

  10 Copy quote

• Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction — just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with those genes have, relative to other individuals, greater or lesser reproductive success.

  Randolph M. Nesse

  Goal, Individual, Natural

  Randolph M. Nesse, George C. Williams (2012). “Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine”, p.14, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.

  Richard Dawkins

  Brain, Natural, Criteria

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene”, p.167, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Knowledge, Science, Ideas

  "Against Method". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1975.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source