Quotes about Adaptation

As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its owns books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. - Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

What do you do when it rains? The captain answered frankly. I get wet.

mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

There are two kinds of pain: the pain of change and the pain of never changing and remaining the same.

Leaders are not born; I believe they are made.

I can tell you that it was not easy. It was vitally necessary in order for us to make progress as a ministry, but it was probably one of the most difficult times ever for our employees. They had to learn entirely new ways of processing information and it didn't always seem to work right immediately. Eventually the old ways were gone and the new was comfortable and much, much better—but everyone had to be patient!

Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

We can change our quality of life by changing your attitude toward the big and small things that usually irritate and anger us.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

Two movements in human life are important: (a) deep reluctance to let loose of a world that has passed away, and (b) capacity to embrace a new world being given.

Because if you cling excessively to the past, you will miss the newness being enacted before your very eyes.