Survival Of The Fittest Quotes

• And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Inspirational, Business, Insperational

  1889 'The Gospel of Wealth', in the North American Review, Jun.

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

  Charles Darwin

  Change, Strength, Struggle

  57 Copy quote

• The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions.

  Dave Smalley

  Life, Strong, Acceptance

  26 Copy quote

• Survival of the fittest is over. Get over it. We need survival of the wisest.

  Deepak Chopra

  Survival, Needs, Over It

  "How A Video Game Could Make You A Better Man". Interview with John Scott Lewinski, www.askmen.com. November 22, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Survival, Evolution

  'Principles of Biology' (1865) pt. 3, ch. 12, 164.

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

  Nikola Tesla

  Past, Men, Law

  "A Machine to End War" by Nikola Tesla, 1937.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

  Pope Francis

  Powerful, Mean, Law

  Pope Francis (2014). “The Joy of the Gospel”, p.21, BookBaby

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Philosophy, Survival, Has Beens

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

• All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

  Grace Paley

  Good Life, Survival, Peculiar

  Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.63, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

  Charles Darwin

  Expression, Survival, Sometimes

  On the Origin of Species, 5th ed., ch. 3 (1869) See Philander Johnson 1; Herbert Spencer 5; Herbert Spencer 6

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.

  Louis Cozolino

  Survival

  17 Copy quote

• If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water. It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way - of survival of the fittest.

  Ray Kroc

  Dog, Talking, Water

  46 Copy quote

• As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.'

  Bill Cosby

  Funny, Mother, Brother

  20 Copy quote

• It cannot but happen?that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces? This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

  Herbert Spencer

  Survival, External Forces, Function

  'Principles of Biology' (1865) pt. 3, ch. 12, 164.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Law, Names

  Mark Twain, David Ketterer (1984). “The science fiction of Mark Twain”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Survival of the fittest can take us only so far; competition and aggression have brought us to the brink of self-destruction. What is needed now is survival of the wisest. You can participate in this shift by expanding your own awareness.

  Deepak Chopra

  Self, Competition, Survival

  13 Copy quote

• That's what civilization sometimes did to threats, real or perceived. They walled them off. Us against them. Survival of the fittest. You die so I can live.

  David Baldacci

  Real, Civilization, Survival

  David Baldacci (2012). “The Innocent”, p.9, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Law, Class, Survival

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1844, Manonmani Publishers

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.

  William James

  Fun, Fighting, Survival

  William James (1918). “The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2”, p.412, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Survival, Would Be

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.92

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who puts a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.

  George Washington Carver

  Color, Survival, Demand

  15 Copy quote

• We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest

  Thabo Mbeki

  Future, Survival, Vision

  108 Copy quote

• We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

  Charles Darwin

  Struggle, Science, Survival

  On the Origin of Species ch. 3 (1859) See Malthus 2

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Law, Survival

  21 Copy quote