Selection Quotes - Page 7

• I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.

  Luther Burbank

  Grandchildren, Blessing, Intelligent

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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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• Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Cells, Triumph, Littles

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• Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

  Richard Dawkins

  Car, Design, Natural

  "The atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. April 30, 2005.

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• Natural selection is anything but random.

  Richard Dawkins

  Natural, Natural Selection

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.204, Random House

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• ... I feel the American public would be in a better position to exercise freedom of dietary choice if it were stated in bold print on the Goals and Food Selection pages that the value of dietary change remains controversial and that science cannot at this time insure that an altered diet will provide improved protection from certain killer diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

  Charles H. Percy

  Cancer, Heart, Exercise

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• The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance....Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.

  William A. Dembski

  Want, Resistance, Firsts

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• For years now I have run a kitchen-sink punk salon in my house, called Salon du Gay. In the early days, people would pay for a riot grrrl bob or a passable bleach job with a mixtape, $3 or a selection of baked goods - whichever they could afford. More recently though, with Gossip doing well, I've performed these punk hair transformations for free.

  Beth Ditto

  Running, Jobs, Gay

  "What would Beth Ditto do?" by Beth Ditto, www.theguardian.com. March 6, 2008.

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• Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of natural selection. Following their twin announcements of the theory in 1858, both Darwin and Wallace struggled like Laocoöns with the serpentine problem of human evolution and its encoiling difficulty of consciousness. But where Darwin clouded the problem with his own naivete, seeing only continuity in evolution, Wallace could not do so.

  Julian Jaynes

  Twins, Evolution, Problem

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• . . . by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

  Henri Poincare

  Math, Mind, World

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• I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Hair, Theory Of Evolution

  On the Origin of Species ch. 3 (1859)

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• Take a random selection of photographs of America in 2012 and 2002 and 1992 and, except for the skinny jeans and the porkpie hats, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the years in which the pictures were taken.

  Graydon Carter

  Taken, Years, Jeans

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• DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number - just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Intelligent, Numbers, Justice

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.41, 谷月社

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• The selection of MediLab came after an extensive evaluation process. The laboratory in Zambia presented many challenges such as rapidly expanding services and capacity, the need to coordinate laboratory services for 16 and soon to be 24 clinics in the Lusaka district alone, the need to automate recording and dissemination of results and the need for a robust, expandable, user friendly and technically supported LIMS system. The technology and international experience of MediSolution made MediLab an obvious choice.

  Craig Wilson

  Technology, Zambia, Choices

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• The way it works: The orchestra plays a few selections of its own and I terminate the first part of the programme on piano, usually with a movement from a Mozart concerto.

  George Shearing

  Play, Piano, Movement

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• Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

  Daniel Dennett

  Ideas, People, Tradition

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• Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means "submission". The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.

  Timothy Leary

  Mean, Reality, Names

  "The Intelligence Agents". Book by Timothy Leary, 1979.

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• The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,--once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects--but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Choices, Battle, Half

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.26

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• Parents are untamed, excessive, potentially troublesome creatures; charming to be with for a time, in the main they must lead their own lives, independent and self-employed, with companions of their own age and selection.

  Rose Macaulay

  Independent, Self, Parent

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• If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  Toni Morrison, Carolyn C. Denard (2008). “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.

  Edmund Burke

  Essentials, Saving, May

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• Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.

  Steven Novella

  Weed, Ideas, Diversity

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• In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Horse, Kings, Government

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• Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them.

  Mary Ellen Chase

  Diversity, Imagination, Preparation

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• The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

  Winifred Holtby

  Writing, Creation, Difficulty

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

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