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Form Quotes

“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

WellsMightFormNaturalEnvironmentGreaterBehaviorFunctionSimplicityLocalsComplexityYieldSelectionAdaptationNatural SelectionHabitatNatural Habitats
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.”

IfsKnowsWellsPastFormLyingRolesCapacityMachinesFunctionCertaintyFeaturesImperfectOrganismsUnpredictableAdaptedQuirkyOptimal
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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“A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.”

FormLawForceEnvironmentToo MuchTheoryDevelopmentEvolutionBalanceLimitsStructureWesternLocalsAcknowledgeInternalsEmphasisSelectionAdaptationInheritanceConstraintsRepresentingImposingBiologistTheory Of EvolutionExternal Forces
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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“Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs, and the brain built of neurons in the only example we know - may evolve frequently. But if only one origin of life in a million ever leads to consciousness, then Martian bacteria most emphatically do not imply Little Green Men.”

IfsKnowsMenMayLittlesEyeFormUniverseBrainConsciousnessMillionsExamplePlanetsBuiltGreenEvolveAppropriateLimbsNeuronsBacteriaOrigin Of LifeMartians
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
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“The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.”

PeopleKnowsLongDoneFormCasesMastersDiseaseCrisisTechniqueReasoningProgrammingSoftwareInvitesEngineeringFormalGuruSoftware EngineeringCharlatansQuacksIncurable Disease
Author:Edsger Dijkstra
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“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.”

PeopleIfsWayWellsLongPlayAgeFormSpiritAudienceQuietIntelligentActiveBackgroundsPortraitsRespectableNeat
Book:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
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“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”

HumansFormCertainFoundIndividualSocialReligiousHuman NatureAdventureTheoryAuthorityEternalMethodFinalsExpectingCreedsSooner Or LaterIncapableDemonstrationArrivingCohesionModificationScientific Theory
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.”

LittlesWarFormLawHateNationsViewsVirtueMoralityPoint Of ViewNeighborCriminalsImpulsePropagandaMeritPatrioticAllowingCowardiceHeroismAggressionSpontaneousOutletsCriminal Law
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“Near our vineyard there was a pear tree laden with fruit that was not attractive in either flavor or form. One night, when I [at the age of sixteen] had played until dark on the sandlot with some other juvenile delinquents, we went to shake that tree and carry off its fruit. From it we carried off huge loads, not to feast on, but to throw to the pigs, although we did eat a few ourselves. We did it just because it was forbidden.”

AgeFormNightDarkTreeHugeFruitAttractiveShakesLoadPigsFlavorForbiddenOne NightSixteenJuvenileVineyardsPearsDelinquentsSandlot
Author:Saint Augustine
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“Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them.”

PeopleMindFactsPainFormFatherGrowsOpinionBoysGrowing UpYouthSonCapacityMereAcceptedPhrasesSubstitutesIncapableNo Pain
Book:Autobiography John Stuart Mill: Top Biography
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“The color of the prisoner's skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race - the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.”

MenMindHumansStillsSpiritualFormFatherRaceMinesColorBrotherPrideBearsSkinsAcceptedFeaturesSpiteImmortalMakersPrisonerImpressedInheritanceBe A ManApprovedYour BrotherNot Impressed
Author:William H. Seward
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“Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles.”

PeopleMindLooksStatesBodyGovernmentAmericaFormDifferencesDemocracyIssuesEconomicHealthyDegreesSolutionsEconomicsDollarsDeterminedRussiaCommunistTotalitarianismForms Of GovernmentSettlementHealthy And Happy
Book:Another Roadside Attraction
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“Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.”

IfsNeedsFormYoungOrderCultureLanguageSocialAttitudeEnvironmentChildhoodSkillsBasesComplexesMediumsNurtureIndispensableSegregationTriggersUnnaturalLanguage LearningSocial Environment
Author:Neil Postman
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“Even if I'd stayed [in the US to finish 'The Magnificent Ambersons'] I would've had to make compromises on the editing, but these would've been mine and not the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees. If I had been there myself I would have found my own solutions and saved the pictures in a form which would have carried the stamp of my own effort.”

IfsFormFoundMy OwnEffortMinesSolutionsFruitSavedCompromiseConfusedMagnificentEditingCommitteesStampsHysterical
Author:Orson Welles
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“When Claude Debussy studied at the Paris Conservatory from age ten to age twenty-two, many considered him a rebel because of his treatment of dissonance and his disdain for the established forms. He reputedly turned to a fellow student during a performance of Beethoven with the words, "Let's go. He's starting to develop.”

TwoAgeFormStudentsTenPerformancesTwentiesFellowsStartingParisTreatmentRebelDisdainDissonanceTwenty TwoConservatoryDebussy
Author:Claude Debussy
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“I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball?”

WantShouldMayFormWinningSportsSidesInterestPrayerDoubtTeamDivineBaseballRemarkableContestsArenaInterventionRequestInsultingDivine Intervention
Book:Roger Ebert's video companion: 1996 edition
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“We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.”

IfsWayIdeasRealityMovingFormLawOrderLanguageStepsCuttingRootsScreensOur ThoughtsValidityGroove
Author:Frank Herbert
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“I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.”

IfsMindHeartChildrenLongMadeI CanIdeasWholeFormSufferingExistenceSilenceStrangeWeaknessTiredMiseryResolutionToysDefectsCompoundsEndeavour
Author:Mary Wollstonecraft
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“The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.”

MenGivingMindKindMayWholeMomentsActionTogetherLastsFormSoundWeekConditionsMovementGeniusOrdinaryBasesRemainsSeriesExtraordinaryRingsAbsurdImpulseInsanityLatterBellsVibrationsKinshipOrdinary ManVibrate
Author:Otto Weininger
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“Heroic figures are now obsolete,So Demigod and Devil find retreatIn minds of children - as rare beasts and men,Elsewhere extinct, persist in hill or fenFrom man protected - where each form assumesGigantic stature and intention, loomsFrom wind-moved, twilight-woven histories:For them each flower teems with mysteries.”

MenMindChildrenFormMysteryFiguresWindFlowerDevilMovedIntentionHillsBeastHeroicElsewhereTwilightProtectedPersistWovenObsoleteStatureDemigods
Book:The collected satires and poems of Osbert Sitwell
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“The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis.”

LittlesBookFormUnderstandingReligiousWrittenFieldsSceneElementsMajorsUniqueAspectAccountsTablesPhotographLandscapeContributionMapsLastingChicagoUrbanSurveysOverlookedMetropolisAmerican Landscape
Author:Peter Haggett
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“It is that the Spirit is the outbreathing of God, His inmost life going forth in a personal form to quicken. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive the inmost life of God Himself to dwell in a personal way in us. When we really grasp this thought, it is overwhelming in its solemnity. Just stop and think what it means to have the inmost life of that infinite and eternal Being whom we call God, dwelling in a personal way in you. How solemn and how awful and yet unspeakably glorious life becomes when we realize this.”

ThinkingWayMeanFormSpiritRealizingHolyEternalInfiniteAwfulHoly SpiritGloriousOverwhelmingSolemnDwellingSolemnityGlorious Life
Book:THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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