Selected adaptation quotes

1. I'm still a shy person. I've learned to put that aside on certain occasions. I have to. It's part of my job.

2. I was particularly stunned by the casting of [Tom] Cruise, who is no more my Vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.

3. Change in all things is sweet.

4. Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them, others are so fast, they don't notice you.

5. I didn't mind being a public executioner, once I got the hang of it.

6. I grew up with the concept of freedom of speech. So I'm too old, it's too late for me to adjust to the new world, the new world order.

7. Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.

8. One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

12. There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

13. We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

14. The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

15. He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

16. A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle. When the word 'containment' was used in my 'X' article, it was used with relation to a certain situation then prevailing, and as a response to it.

17. From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtually limitless.

18. I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

19. Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.

20. Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.

21. These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

22. I am convinced that there is no sort of boundary between the living and the mental or between the biological and the psychological. From the moment an organism takes account of a previous experience and adapts to a new situation, that very much resembles psychology.

23. As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

24. I was familiar with that and 'Rio Bravo.' 'Rio Bravo' was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.

25. He thinks he can use the jail for networking to be somebody. In that way, he's always operating.

26. Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts. It would require brand new techniques. Grimly he set out to evolve them.

27. But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)

28. Hinduism is like the Ganga, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every province, but the inner substance is retained everywhere.

29. Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave.

30. If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.

31. Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.

32. Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.

33. I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.

34. Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

35. 'A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.'

36. One learns to itch where one can scratch.

37. If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

38. Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

39. I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

40. If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

41. Yes, my works lose something in the original.

42. We study and take as an example the Soviet system, but we are developing socialism in our country in somewhat different forms.

43. Read the comics, which are probably far better than the film would be if I was involved. Otherwise, my version of Batman would be like him standing around talking for two weeks and not getting anything done. The Bat-A-Rang would never leave the utility belt. It would just be chatting.

44. I generally had to give in.

45. One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

46. Some men have sufficient strength of mind to change their disposition, or at least to yield to imperative circumstances.

47. To extraordinary circumstances we must apply extraordinary remedies.

48. Perseverance: The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those that fail.

49. The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

50. A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

51. If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

52. Another friend began to say, 'Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he...' This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, 'I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him.'

53. There is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive - even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (i.e., no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction - like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather.

54. Another force driving progressive evolution is the so-called 'arms-race.' Prey animals evolve faster running speeds because predators do. Consequently predators have to evolve even faster running speeds, and so on, in an escalating spiral. Such arms races probably account for the spectacularly advanced engineering of eyes, ears, brains, bat 'radar' and all the other high-tech weaponry that animals display.

55. Thus the creationist's favourite question 'What is the use of half an eye?' Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.

56. Thus the creationist's favourite question 'What is the use of half an eye?' Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant.

57. My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolve adaptations not just to 'inanimate' factors like the weather (which would produce essentially predictable, not emergent evolution) but to other evolving life forms (which is a recipe for emergent properties).

58. People are inexterminable - like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices - that's us.

59. Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

60. The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.

61. Overhead, capricious spring clouds began to scud across the sky in mackerel shapes, promising more rain. Garraty turned up his collar and listened to the sound of his feet pounding the pavement. There was a trick to that, a subtle mental adjustment, like having better night vision the longer you were in the dark. This morning the sound of his feet had been lost to him. They had been lost in the tramp of ninety-nine other pairs, not to mention the rumble of the halftrack. But now he heard them easily. His own particular stride, and the way his left foot scraped the pavement every now and then. It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.

62. Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

63. Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences.

64. Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.

65. I just put on what the lady says. I've been married three times, so I've had lots of supervision.

66. In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of circumstances in which men find themselves, every object which surrounds them, communicates a definite form and impress to their internal nature. This form is not such that it can change and adapt itself to any other a man may choose to receive; and the end is foiled, while the power is destroyed, when we attempt to impose upon that which is already stamped in the soul a form which disagrees with it.

67. The powerful retractile talons of the falcon- and the cat-tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; but among the different varieties which occurred in the earlier and less highly organized forms of these groups, those always survived longest which had the greatest facilities for seizing their prey. Neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for the purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh range of pasture over the same ground as their shorter-necked companions, and on the first scarcity of food were thereby enabled to outlive them. [...] We believe we have now shown that there is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type - a progression to which there appears no reason to assign any definite limits - and that the same principle which produces this result in a state of nature will also explain why domestic varieties have a tendency to revert to the original type. This progression, by minute steps, in various directions, but always checked and balanced by the necessary conditions, subject to which alone existence can be preserved, may, it is believed, be followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena presented by organized beings, their extinction and succession in past ages, and all the extraordinary modifications of form, instinct, and habits which they exhibit.

68. The best of Mozart's works cannot be even slightly rewritten without diminishment. ~ Peter Shaffer

69. The Stand (miniseries)