Quotes About Evolution

Keep in mind, however, that people are in a state of continual flux. You must not let your ideas about them harden into a set impression. You are continually observing them and bringing your readings of them up to date.

In the evolution of fear, a decisive moment occurred in the nineteenth century when people in advertising and journalism discovered that if they framed their stories and appeals with fear, they could capture our attention.

What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after.

circumstances never repeat themselves exactly.

At a certain point, you can almost become a stranger to yourself.

The past often has elements worth appropriating, qualities that would be foolish to reject out of a need to distinguish yourself.... Making a display of doing things differently from your predecessor can make you seem childish and in fact out of control, unless your actions have a logic of their own.

And at the root of this mental transformation are two simple biological traits—the visual and the social—that primitive humans leveraged into power.

In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself. Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.

The matter does not appear to appear to me now as it appears to have appeared to me then.

Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?

siempre se puede decir una cosa de la política: jamás permanece estática. Si los buenos tiempos no duran eternamente, los malos tampoco.

the struggle [for existence] almost invariably will be most severe between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers. CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

I guess you're familiar with Moore's Law? This states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit—which basically means memory size and processing speed—will double every eighteen months, and costs will halve. Moore's Law has held with amazing consistency since 1965, and it still holds.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching oversized braincase and the opposable thumb—this animal barely up from the apes—will endure, will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets—to the stars and beyond—carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage, and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

It means constantly seeking and implementing better ways of thinking and acting across old and new corners of the system.

The basic technological unemployment narrative is the same, but the examples have a wider scope. First, giant locomotives and electrical power equipment economized on human muscle power. After the mutation, the narrative focused on computers replacing human thinking. This mutation refreshed the narrative.

But rather than collapse under these threats and pulls, the self turns out to be surprisingly resilient. It makes use of bits and pieces here and there and somehow keeps going. What may seem to be mere tactical flexibility, or just bungling along, turns out to be much more than that. We find ourselves evolving a self of many possibilities, one that has risks and pitfalls but at the same time holds out considerable promise for the human future.

When change comes, you can scream and try to force things to stay the same. But you'll usually end up getting trampled. However, if you can direct the changes, they can serve you.

Times are not what they were, and we cannot be, either. If you sit and wish for what you want, you may not see it this side of the grave.

He was not as she remembered. His features were the same, but his face was hard. Blue ice made his eyes. The bloody rips in his coat and breeches, the blood on his face, seemed to suit that face.

Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change.

Change came so slowly you never noticed it creeping up on you, or far too fast for comfort, but it came.

People frequently continued to go on as they had been after all purpose in it had been lost.

People never really changed, yet the world did, with disturbing regularity. You just had to live with it, or at least live through it. Now and then, with luck, you could affect the direction of the changes, but even if you stopped one, you only set another in motion.