Quotes About Evolution

We are medium-sized mammals who only prosper because we've developed a half-arsed ability to terraform the less suitable bits of the planet we evolved on, and we're conscious of our inevitable decay and death, and we can't live anywhere else. There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die.

How many times can summer turn to fall in one life?

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what good or bad language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do.

Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in the child's environment. And fitness, because we have competition, can be measured by the compatibility of a grammar with what a child hears in a particular linguistic environment. This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes.

John Laroche: You know why I like plants? Susan Orlean: Nuh uh. John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world. Susan Orlean: [pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.

he—I do wish somebody would think up a new collective pronoun—

You start out every day with something new and different, and sometimes it looks pretty good and sometimes it doesn't, but you have to go through it anyway.

Too often when embarking on a journey, we focus on what needs to get done without looking at who we need to become in order to get there.

Then his real struggle would begin. Then he would try to make them understand that the old ways were no more.

Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching.

Men of today have learnt to shoot without missing and so I have learnt to fly without perching.

whether we look at one human family or we look at human society in general, growth can come only incrementally.

The Igbo culture says no condition is permanent. There is constant change in the world.

El mundo está cambiando ?le había dicho?. No me gusta, pero soy como el pájaro eneke-nti-oba, que cuando sus amigos le preguntaron por que volaba a todas horas respondió: Los hombres de hoy han aprendido a disparar sin errar y por eso yo he aprendido a volar sin posarme en las ramas.

Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve.

We are the only primates that can tap our foot or move our body in time with a specific rhythm. It's wired into us, but not into our chimp or gorilla cousins, which tells us that it is a trait that like language, big toes, and toolmaking evolved sometime over the past seven million years.

Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve. (Think about that for a moment.)

The question now is, can we survive ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human?

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. —Richard Dawkins

The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past, fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep. —Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey In

I USED TO make love. Now I Make coffee.

El modelo tradicional de promoción, comercialización y distribución de música ha perdido vigencia. Los principales sellos discográficos y el sistema de distribución minorista que adquirió dimensiones colosales gracias a la fábrica de éxitos de la radio se encuentran con un modelo empresarial dependiente de los grandes éxitos; y ahora ya no hay suficientes discos de oro y de platino. Estamos asistiendo al fin de una era.

In short, we're seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture.

Along with the fragmentation of markets is coming the fragmentation of marketing.