Quotes About Evolution

It's harder and harder to make a well-done romantic comedy these days because the conventions have been so played out.

Enlightenment (or not) is an evolutionary process

That is the thing about films. They don't change. You change. The immutability of the film (or a book or a painting or a piece of music) is something to measure yourself against. That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.

The library is what keeps us a step ahead of the apes.

Everything change with mine, Katya.

Libraries are what keep us a step ahead of the apes.

I can always get better. A lot of my ex-girlfriends don't think I'm funny.

If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.

People talk about 'getting rid of the old image', and I guess there's some merit in that. But the truth is that people loved 'The Wonder Years' - I can't turn my back on it.

Every time I get into a Nationwide car after being in a Cup car, I feel so much more comfortable than I did previously.

Building purpose is...] not as simple as carving a mission statement in granite or encouraging everyone to recite a hymnal of catchphrases. It's a never-ending process of trying, failing, reflecting and above all learning. High-purpose environments don't descend on groups from on high; they are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates it's problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.

proximity functions as a kind of connective drug. Get close, and our tendency to connect lights up. As scientists have pointed out, the Allen Curve follows evolutionary logic. For the vast majority of human history, sustained proximity has been an indicator of belonging—after all, we don't get consistently close to someone unless it's mutually safe.

You will become clever through your mistakes.

At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'

When we were little kids, 'friend' wasn't a verb. You didn't 'friend' someone. You had friends. It was only a noun. It didn't multitask. It was a simpler time, Hen.

Evolve the Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. ERIC HOFFER

Arthritic toothless people who love orgasms are more likely to reproduce than are limber, toothy people who do not.

This frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.

Unfortunately, even big ideas leave no fossils for carbon dating

The frontal lobe is the recent addition to the human brain that allows us to imagine the future.

We think about the future in a way that no other animal can, does, or ever has, and this simple, ubiquitous, ordinary act is a defining feature of our humanity.