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Selection Quotes

Browse 515 quotes about Selection.

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Selection Quotes

“Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.”

ProcessNaturalViewsStudyStudentsEvolutionArgumentAccountsPaidDataPreservesExpertsFancySelectionFossilsNatural SelectionStasis
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water.”

ForceWaterPrinciplesActivityCriticismCriticsSentencesNineEnormousRejectionSelectionSkeletonsIceberg
Book:Conversations with Thornton Wilder
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“One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.”

WritingMindMeanLongHas BeensMadeStillsMatterStoriesGrowsDarkLordDoubtTreeForgottenSeedsRingsSoilNo DoubtLong AgoLeafsSelectionGardenerMoldDescendingCompostBotany
Author:J. R. R. Tolkien
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“In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.”

WayWritingStoriesUseChoicesLanguageRaceAttitudeWonderfulParticularSittingDecidedDetermineGenderDefinedToneDesksVocabularySelectionGrammarInitialsPalette
Book:The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany
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“I believe that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.”

WayBelieveHumansStillsLyingI BelieveBornImpossiblePossibilityConsciousFundamentalsIndividualityImprovementDisplaySelectionMisunderstandingProposeBreedingReproductionEugenicsEuthanasiaSterilization
Author:H. G. Wells
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“The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.”

MenWorldFacesDesireArtistPassionWishNaturalTeachTheoryPoliticianChessRisingBombsOccupationSatisfyingSelectionSlapNatural SelectionAbsorbingNamelessUnreliableDaggersPlaying Chess
Author:H. G. Wells
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“The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.”

FirstsHumansHeartMeanHas BeensArtOrderChallengesHuman BeingsCitiesMysteryStreetsPhotographyIntellectualMachinesBallsPhotographerObjectivesVisualsSensiblePortraitsSelectionFrameworkObjectivityCity StreetsBouncing Ball
Author:Berenice Abbott
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“There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.”

WellsEyeIndividualEnergyNaturalExampleCostWasteBenefitsEconomicsPaidPressureSufficientBiologySelectionNatural SelectionSmiley
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

PeopleIfsMenIdeasGovernmentFormPoliticalPoliticsCommunitySituationLibertyVirtueDependsEconomicsChecksSecureSufficientRulersSelectionWretchedTheoreticalForms Of Government
Book:James Madison's
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“The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

MenMayHas BeensStatesEnoughGovernmentFormSocialNaturalVirtueCreationPureOfficeConcernManageInstructionSelectionAristocracyForms Of GovernmentInconsistentPrecious Gifts
Book:The Essential Jefferson
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“I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet-all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.”

WantLittlesHas BeensUseLightAirHealthOughtQuietMedicinePatientAdministrationDietsExpensesWarmthApplicationNurseSelectionNursingCleanlinessFresh Air
Book:Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale
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“Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.”

IfsThinkingWayShouldHumansKindWould BeHumanitySocialCausesJusticeRaceProgressImpossibleBasesAimHuman RaceSelectionObjectivityUndesirable
Author:Howard Zinn
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“Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we eat today was bred from a wild, less edible ancestor. If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only ten or fifteen thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life.”

IfsYearsFactsTodayNaturalAnswersAnimalThousandTenDiversityPlantProfoundBillionsGrassAncestorArtificialFifteenThousand YearsSelectionCornShepherdsNatural SelectionWheatPlants And AnimalsDiversity Of Life
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [...] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.”

PersonsHardPhilosophyFightingPresidentConclusionCombinationDecentDisappointedJudgedSelectionReflectingPresident BushCompetentDemoralizedCapitulationCronyism
Author:William Kristol
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“Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.”

IfsHumansMayNaturalEmotionBrainEmotionalNeededBalanceRationalInternalsRationalitySelectionBetter OffRivalsNatural SelectionHuman BrainOptimalMr SpockTeaming Up
Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
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“The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.”

PeopleHas BeensScienceNaturalForgetTheoryEvolutionObservationParenthoodModestSelectionAdoptedDistinguishedGeneticsEcologicalNatural SelectionTheory Of Evolution
Author:John L. Harper
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“We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution.”

MenKindFactsWould BeLyingEasyNaturalDoubtWorstEffectsObjectsEvolutionEssentialsAddPopulationNo DoubtElsewherePersistSelectionNatural SelectionBacteriaMutationMutants
Author:Pierre-Paul Grasse
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“The greatest act of love was to make a tape for someone. It was the only way we could share music and it was also a way of advertising yourself. Selection, order, the lettering you used for the track list, how much technical detail you went into, whether or not you added artwork or offered only artwork and no track list at all, these choices were as codified as a Victorian bouquet.”

WayUsedOrderChoicesShareTrackDetailsListsAdvertisingTapeSelectionArtworkVictorianActs Of LoveBouquets
Book:The Importance of Music to Girls
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“The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. . . . Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society.”

PeopleMenHumansChildrenHas BeensStillsEnoughAgeTogetherProcessPowerfulResponsibilityFamilyProduceMen And WomenUniversalBasesInstitutionsExpectedAccessPartnersTiesOutcomesHistorianSelectionRaising ChildrenFormationKinshipLiving TogetherAnthropologists
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.”

RealUsedReadingTermNaturalExpressionSurvivalAdvantageLettersAgreeExcellentSelectionGoverningVerbsObjectionsNatural SelectionSurvival Of The Fittest
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)
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“In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.”

IfsBodyScienceNaturalQualitySurvivalGenesSelectionNatural Selection
Book:The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
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“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.”

WorldMaySaidOpportunityNaturalConditionsOffersRelationImprovementSelectionVariationNatural SelectionRejecting
Book:The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 15: On the Origin of Species, 1859
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