Best Selection Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I think George Mitchell is a consummate professional. He is the ideal selection to handle the job of special envoy if you choose to have a special envoy.”

Ifs Thinking Jobs Special Ideals Handle You Choose Selection

Author:John F. Kerry

“As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.”

Natural Progress Perfection Selection Natural Selection Endowment Origin Of Species

Book:On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

Source: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

“Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.”

Mean Long Has Beens Natural Remains Convinced Obscure Selection Exclusive Natural Selection Modification

Book:The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species

Source: The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species

“There is no gene "for" such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. [...] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts.”

Body Action Left Bits Influence Building Series Environmental Internals Genes Selection Fingernails Morphology Environmental Influences

Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

Source: The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

“The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function.”

Knows Humans Done Culture Causes Natural Brain Essentials Survival Machines Function Currents Entity Grounded Selection Natural Selection Human Brain Computing Good Causes

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Yes, I spent two long years, traveling all over the United States, all over Europe, interviewing many, many, many people who had been thrown out of their academic jobs because they taught that there was a possibility of life coming from something other than Darwinism, who thought that possibly random selection and mutations didn't account for the universe, didn't account for gravity, didn't account for why nobody had ever seen an individual species evolve - no one's ever seen an individual species evolve!”

People Years Long Two States Jobs Universe Individual United United States Possibility Taught Europe Accounts Species Evolve Thrown Academic Gravity Selection Darwinism Mutation

Author:Ben Stein

“In a sense, sexual harassment lawsuits are just the latest version of the female selection process allowing her to select for men who care enough for her to put their career at risk; who have enough finesse to initiate without becoming a jerk and enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit. In the past, though, the process of his overcoming her barriers was called 'courtship.' Now it is called either 'courtship' or 'sexual harassment'.”

Men Enough Care Past Process Careers Risk Becoming Female Overcoming Versions Despite Guts Barriers Allowing Who Cares Selection Select Jerk Harassment Courtship Initiate Lawsuit Finesse

Author:Warren Farrell

“Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases - the second law of thermodynamics - holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law [the fundamental theorem of natural selection] should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences.”

Thinking Should Littles Law Natural Position Increase Fundamentals Supreme Professors Selection Laws Of Nature Natural Selection Theorems Entropy Thermodynamics Biological Science

Author:Ronald Fisher

“The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.”

“Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.”

May Facts Turns Universe Natural Existence Theory Evolution Explanation Remarkable Selection Natural Selection Theory Of Evolution

Book:The Theory of Evolution

Source: The Theory of Evolution

“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.”

Source: Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings

“What had been released into the desert vacuum and starry oases of the galaxy was the inexorable logic of reproduction and natural selection. What followed was parasitism, predation, symbiosis, interdependency chaos, complexity, life.”

Natural Logic Chaos Desert Complexity Galaxy Selection Vacuums Natural Selection Reproduction Oasis Inexorable Symbiosis

Book:Vortex

Source: Vortex

“When I was dating and the wine list was presented to my male companion, I tried to ignore this unfortunate faux pas. But this practice still goes on...Closing note to all servers and sommeliers: please include women in wine selection. Okay?”

Stills Practice Goes On Please Okay Dating Wine Notes Males Lists Companion Unfortunate Selection Closing Server Faux Faux Pas Sommelier

Author:Alpana Singh

“When the press writes scare stories about the global labor supply draining jobs from rich to poor places, the story is usually presented as a "race to the bottom" simply in terms of wages. Capitalism supposedly looks for labor wherever labor is cheapest. This story is half wrong. A kind of cultural selection is also at work, so that jobs leave high-wage countries like the United States and Germany, but migrate to low-wage economies with skilled, sometimes overqualified workers.”

Source: The Culture of the New Capitalism

“We are embedded in the great evolutionary story of planet Earth, the spare, elegant process of mutation and selection and bricolage. And this means that we are anything but alone.”

Mean Stories Earth Process Planets Spares Selection Elegant Planet Earth Embedded Mutation

Book:The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature

“Comic book readers are just as abandoned by the corporate system as the creators, despite the importance supposedly given their hard-earned dollars. The average comics shop can offer only a tiny fraction of an industrywide selection that is itself extremely limited in scope. And even when readers know exactly what they want, the search can be maddeningly futile.”

Knows Want Book Hard Given Reader Offers Importance Dollars Average Creator Tiny Despite Comic Corporate Shops Abandoned Comic Book Selection Scope Fractions Book Readers

Author:Scott McCloud

“The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).”

“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.”

“I Must warn you, Iris, that I'm not a believer. And though I'm sure that the revelations of other men must be a source of infinite satisfaction to them, individually, I shouldn't for one second be so presumptuous as to make a choice among the many thousands of recorded revelations of truth, accepting one at the expense of all the others: I might so easily choose wrong and get into eternal trouble. And you must admit that the selection is wide, and dangerous to the amateur.”

Men Might Choices Accepting Trouble Atheism Dangerous Source Eternal Infinite Satisfaction Positive Atheism Wide Believer Revelations Expenses Selection Presumptuous Irises

Author:Gore Vidal

“If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection - ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein - because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and motion, particles jostling on the one side, and the world of meaning and purpose, design on the other.”

Ifs World Giving Two Ideas Matter Purpose Universe Sides Natural Design Features Prize Meaningless Selection Particles Newton Natural Selection

Author:Daniel Dennett

“The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."”

People Thinking Ideas Happens Used Purpose Natural Views Design Tradition Bottom Creator Traditional Uncomfortable Reverse Selection Saying No Natural Selection Think Of Me Top Down

Author:Daniel Dennett

“After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being perhaps just the chooser of the laws. By the time God's role has been so diminished, he becomes a bit like a constitutional monarch, presiding ceremonially but not having any more work to do. That's a place for God if it makes people comfortable to keep God as the presider over the universe. I suppose that is satisfying for many.”

People Ifs Has Beens Law Universe Bits Natural Roles Creatures Comfortable Designer Satisfying Selection Laws Of Nature Natural Selection Monarchs

Author:Daniel Dennett

“You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that at least some of that variation is inherited - and the syllogistic inference is natural selection.”

Facts Together Three Natural Produce Organisms Selection Variation Natural Selection Offspring Inference

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a principle or progress; it's just a principle of local adaptation. You don't make better creatures in any cosmic sense; you make creatures that are better suited to the changing climates of their local habitats.”

Three Natural Principles Environment Progress Produce Creatures Climate Productions Locals Factors Cosmic Selection Adaptation Inheritance Variation Natural Selection Habitat

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“The result of the revolution in Germany has been to establish a democracy in the best sense of the word. We are steering towards an order of things guaranteeing a process of a natural and reasonable selection in the domain of political leadership, thanks to which that leadership will be entrusted to the most competent, irrespective of their descent, name or fortune. The memorable words of the great Corsican that every soldier carries a Field Marshal's baton in his knapsack, will find its political complement in Germany.”

“When I stopped eating meat, I fell in love with East Indian food - there's so much selection, and they use the most beautiful spices.”

Use Beautiful Eating East Indian Meat Selection Spices Eating Meat Indian Food

Author:Laura Mennell

“I'm an old git now, so I would say this, but television was better when there were less channels. There was more concentration and selection in terms of the output.”

Term Television Concentration Selection Output

Author:Ross Kemp

“My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.”

Natural My Own Generations Fields Majors Transformation Tiny Selection Premises Natural Selection Immensity Paleontology Geological Time

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality.”

Has Beens Natural Majors Odd Biology Mechanism Discovering Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Fundamentalist Evolutionary Biology

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,--once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects--but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them.”

May Said Choices Literature Half Subjects Position Battle Determined Despite Great Men Selection

Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

“Parents are untamed, excessive, potentially troublesome creatures; charming to be with for a time, in the main they must lead their own lives, independent and self-employed, with companions of their own age and selection.”

Self Age Parent Creatures Independent Companion Charming Employed Selection Troublesome Untamed

Author:Rose Macaulay

“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Order Magic Mystery Discovery Awe Reverence Selection

Book:What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction

Source: What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction

“Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.”

Ifs Kind May Economy Virtue Higher Essentials Saving Expenses Selection Distinctive Parsimony

Author:Edmund Burke

“Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.”

Doe Ideas Reason Religion Process Natural Generations Atheism Evolution Diversity Negative Critical Arguing Weed Skepticism New Ideas Selection Natural Selection

Author:Steven Novella

“In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.”

Should Firsts May Made Government America Politics Process Kings Horse Technique Circles Fund Sunrise Selection Drowning Qualifications Persia Unconcerned Electoral Process Darius

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them.”

May Imagination Quality Diversity England Preparation Originality Consumption Selection Elegance

Author:Mary Ellen Chase

“The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.”

Knows Writing Bits Novel Creation Difficulty Selection Novel Writing

Book:Letters to a Friend

Source: Letters to a Friend

“Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution.”

Mind May Sex Natural Differences Principles Subjects Evolution Selection Natural Selection

Author:Antoinette Brown Blackwell

“You may know more about vintage wine than the wine steward, but if you're smart you'll let your man do the choosing and be ecstatic over his selection, even if it tastes like shampoo.”

Ifs Knows Men May Taste Smart Wine Selection Vintage Ecstatic Stewards Shampoo

Author:Arlene Dahl

“The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed.”

“Model building is the art of selecting those aspects of a process that are relevant to the question being asked. As with any art, this selection is guided by taste, elegance, and metaphor; it is a matter of induction, rather than deduction. High science depends on this art.”

Art Matter Process Building Depends Taste Models Aspect Metaphor Relevant Selection Elegance Deductions

Book:Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity

Source: Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity

“Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection.”

Writing Facts Faces Certain Lost Process Natural Levels Views Civilization Fundamentals Saved Optimistic Selection Best Work Natural Selection Regression

Book:The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn

Source: The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn

“All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority.”

Persons Action Actors Influence Particular Exercise Authority Behavior Conscious Unconscious Selection

Book:Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization

Source: Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization

“While no rigorous proof of an optimal strategy has been achieved, Robbins has proposed the principal of "staying on a winner" and has shown it to be uniformly better than a strategy of random selection.”

Has Beens Strategy Proof Winner Staying Principal Selection Optimal

Author:Richard Arnold Epstein

“There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There's no wild cows... You list all the fruit, and all the vegetables, and ask yourself, is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it's not as large, it's not as sweet, it's not as juicy, and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection.”

Ifs Way Asks Animal Sweet Fruit Seeds Lists Vegetables Cows Artificial Selection Counterparts Juicy Genetically Modified

Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art...Books are as essential as breathing.”

Needs Art Book Choices Talent Essentials Breathing Sanity Crucial Nurture Selection Solace Curls Browsing

Author:Sarah Ban Breathnach

“All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.”

Humans Human Beings Selection

Author:N. T. Wright

“Bowl better, Bat better, Catch better, communicate better... Just bloody play better.... I am now available for Selection of Australia..!!!!!”

Play Communicate Available Australia Bowls Bloody Bats Selection

Author:Michael Vaughan

“Human rights are an aspect of natural law, a consequence of the way the universe works, as solid and as real as photons or the concept of pi. The idea of self- ownership is the equivalent of Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by natural selection, of general relativity, and of quantum theory. Before humankind discovered any of these, it suffered, to varying degrees, in misery and ignorance.”

“Science is very cross-generational; you're not just aiming it at twentysomethings, or eightysomethings. Every town's got a really broad selection of people and age groups interested in science.”

People Age Groups Crosses Towns Broads Selection

Author:Robin Ince

Selection Quotes

Related topics

Selection Quotes