Best Variation Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“If, however, one factor is too successful, it will continue to be the winning factor regardless of the variation in the other factors over the range of variation in the conditions, and therefore will stifle the development of other advantageous factors until the conditions change sufficiently that it no longer is the winning factor. At this point, the whole population is ill prepared for the change, and may well perish entirely if the winning factor accidentally becomes the matching factor for a disease or a predator.”

Ifs Wells May Whole Winning Successful Conditions Development Disease Prepared Ill Population Factors Range Variation Predator Matching

Author:Erik Naggum

“The apostles were scattered, and even the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem had neither the power nor the means to impose uniformity.In these circumstances, we must imagine the literature of Christianity as spreading gradually, irregularly, and in a manner which variations inevitable.”

Mean Literature Church Leader Christianity Imagine Circumstances Inevitable Variation Apostles Jerusalem Uniformity

Author:Frederic G. Kenyon

“It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.”

Kind Different Earth Conditions Essentials Tradition Details Proof Substance Copies Diverse Variation Ancestry Tracing Soundness

Author:Frederic G. Kenyon

“If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”

Ifs Feels Heart Doe Beats Rhythm Echoes Variation

Author:Brad Leithauser

“A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart”

Heart Earth Form Sound Water Sea Movement Return Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Infinity Veins Variation

Author:Roderick Haig-Brown

“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).”

“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

“There's more variation among human groups than between human groups.”

Humans Groups Variation

Author:Gloria Steinem

“I regard it as a tragedy that people of a differing sexual orientation find themselves proscribed in a world that has so little understanding for homosexuals and that displays such gross indifference for sexual gradations and variations and the great significance they have for living. It is completely foreign to me to wish to regard such people as less valuable, less moral, incapable of noble sentiments and behavior.”

People World Littles Wish Understanding Moral Behavior Tragedy Regard Valuable Noble Indifference Significance Sentiments Display Incapable Homosexual Gross Variation Orientation

Author:Emma Goldman

“It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.”

Ifs Should Looks Children Doe Grows Causes Growth Notion Critical Our Time Theme Variation Fallacy Radishes

Author:Margaret Atwood

“The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.”

Ifs Humans Eye Lines Expression Depends Painter Variation Countenance

Book:The Stones of Venice

Source: The Stones of Venice

“Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.”

Wells Conditions Subjects Morality Stable Uncertain Variation

Book:The Oasis: A Novel

Source: The Oasis: A Novel

“We've taken disturbances and fluctuations and averaged them together to give us comfortable statistics. Our training has been to look for big numbers, important trends, major variances. Yet it is the slight variations - soft-spoken, even whispered at first - that we need to encourage.”

Source: Leadership and the new science: learning about organization from an orderly universe

“I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn't end I'll go to a French movie. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can't just build off the first one or play variations.”

Ifs Want Writing Firsts Ends Play Whole Expecting Variation French Movies

Author:Joss Whedon

“there are only two basic ways of structuring the relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterned on either a dominator model - in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force or the threat of force - or a partnership model, with variations in between.”

Way Humans Two Humanity Force Half Models Female Relation Threat Males Partnership Hierarchy Variation Females And Males

Book:The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Source: The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

“Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.”

Motivation Can Do Realizing Particular Theme Variation

Author:Meg Wolitzer

“It can take a few months to get a new 10 minutes. Usually it takes like 10 times of repeatedly trying different variations of a joke until I land on one I think is really good.”

Thinking Trying Different Land Minutes Months Jokes Variation

Author:Aziz Ansari

“The variation between countries is partly due to cultural and institutional differences, but undoubtedly the economic landscape within each territory is crucial.”

Country Differences Economic Dues Landscape Territory Crucial Variation Parting

Author:Lorna Byrne

“... much seemingly chance variation in human behavior is not due to chance; it is in fact the logical result of a few basic, observable differences in mental functioning.”

Humans Facts Differences Chance Results Behavior Dues Logical Human Behavior Variation

Book:Gifts differing: understanding personality type

Source: Gifts differing: understanding personality type

“The man of genius whether as artist or thinker requires a mass of accidental variations to select from and a rigidly selective process of attention.”

Men Artist Process Attention He Man Genius Mass Thinker Variation Select Selective

Author:Boris Sidis

“The soul has two parts, one rational and the other irrational. Let us now similarly divide the rational part, and let it be assumed that there are two rational faculties, one whereby we contemplate those things whose first principles are invariable, and one whereby we contemplate those things which admit of variation.”

Firsts Two Soul Principles Rational Faculty Divides Contemplating Irrational Variation

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.”

Jazz Endless Theme Diplomacy Variation

Author:Richard Holbrooke

“Bob Dylan's one of the greatest blues singers of the western world; ancient art, on-the-spot improvisation, mind quickness, endless variation, classical formulae, prophetic vision, mighty wind-horse.”

World Mind Art Vision Wind Horse Western Ancient Singers Endless Spots Bob Dylan Variation Improvisation Prophetic Western World Quickness Ancient Art Mighty Wind

Author:Allen Ginsberg

“I want to show people how there are variations and different interpretations of good and evil.”

People Want Different Shows Evil Good And Evil Interpretation Variation Different Interpretations

Author:Hideo Kojima

“If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.”

Ifs Looks Self Tree Computer Method Productions Architecture Complexity Branches Repetition Leafs Variation Similarity Tree Branches

Author:Charles Jencks

“I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

Way Two Different Silence Heard Feminism Conflict Hundred Female Feminist Instance Variation Piety Victimhood

Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses

Source: Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses

“A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.”

Use Action Law Causes Growth Conditions Effects Fields Direct Inquiry Variation Correlation Direct Action

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

“I suggest that what artists do in all media can be summarized as deliberately performing the operations that occur instinctively during a ritualized behaviour: they simplify or formalize, repeat (sometimes with variation), exaggerate, and elaborate in both space and time for the purpose of attracting attention and provoking and manipulating emotional response.”

Art Sometimes Poetry Purpose Artist Space Attention Media Emotional Response Operations Performing Repeats Behaviour Provoking Time And Space Variation Simplify Emotional Response

Author:Ellen Dissanayake

“What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others”

People Want Kind Children Matter Special Exciting Surface Manners My Children Pleasant Variation Gracious Fooled Bad Manners

Author:William Saroyan

“I like to count myself as someone who doesn't follow that stuff and someone who's just trying to invent stories and characters and movies that are just funny and work because they're good and not because they're a slight variation that were hot a few months ago.”

Trying Character Stories Stuff Months Hot Variation

Author:Scot Armstrong

“I discovered that some things are written for us. It's not that we can't change our ancestral bearings, or that the path or purpose of any of our lives is really written in stone. But what tends to happen sometimes is the path is so deeply inscribed in the birth that it becomes you and every variation away from it brings you back in ways that you are not controlling.”

Way Sometimes Happens Life Is Purpose Path Our Lives Written Birth Stones Variation Can't Change Written In Stone

Author:Maya Tiwari

“Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.”

“Today the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of everything. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variation this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range from factory-hand of clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in whatever field and however pursued raises modern man above this level.”

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

Ifs Men Sometimes Used Order Term Natural Principles Expression Survival Mark Relation Accurate Selection Variation Convenient Natural Selection Survival Of The Fittest

Author:Charles Darwin

“Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.”

People Writing Book Certain Subjects Theme Again And Again Variation

Author:Christopher Isherwood

“My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.”

Children Stories Used Certain Father My Own Heard Tendencies Variation

Author:Wole Soyinka

“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”

Men World Way May Different Use Eye Able Lost Women Differences Wife Fronts Men And Women My Wife Spots Desert Different Ways Visuals Convince Hiding Cheese Jungle Variation Refrigerators

Author:Edward T. Hall

“In one way, traveling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere.”

“There are about a thousand different variations on a horse neigh. Some of them sound like a horse having sex, some of them like a horse having sad sex.”

Different Sex Sound Thousand Horse Variation Having Sex

Author:Denis Leary

“I think a brain can be made "more thinking" or made "more emotional." At what point does this become abnormal? Autism in its milder variants, I think, is part of normal human variation.”

Thinking Humans Doe Made Brain Emotional Normal Autism Variation Abnormal

Author:Temple Grandin

“We're interested by public personas and private personas, otherwise we wouldn't put on with actors rambling on with the same kind of stuff, over and over again, saying variations of the same thing. I'm always amazed by how fascinated people still are by actors because it's the same version of events that actors describe, all the time.”

People Kind Stills Actors Stuff Events Versions Fascinated Amazed Variation Persona Rambling

Author:Toby Jones

“There are only five notes in the musical scale, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be heard. There are only five basic colors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be seen. There are only five basic flavors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be tasted. There are only two kinds of charge in battle, the unorthodox surprise attack and the orthodox direct attack, but variations of the unorthodox and the orthodox are endless. The unorthodox and the orthodox give rise to each other, like a beginningless circle-who could exhaust them?”

Giving Kind Two Five Heard Color Battle Direct Notes Surprise Musical Circles Scales Endless Orthodox Flavor Variation Unorthodox Surprise Attacks

Book:The Art of War

Source: The Art of War

“Change is upsetting. Repetition is tedious. Three cheers for variation!”

Three Variety Upset Cheer Repetition Variation Tedious

Author:Mason Cooley

“Life set itself to new processions of seed-time and harvest, the skin newly turned to seasonal variations, the very blood humming to new altitudes.”

Blood Skins Seeds Harvest Variation Procession Humming

Author:Mary Hunter Austin

“In a sense, every tool is a machine--the hammer, the ax, and the chisel. And every machine is a tool. The real distinction is between one man using a tool with his hands and producing an object that shows at every stage the direction of his will and the impression of his personality; and a machine which is producing, without the intervention of a particular man, objects of a uniformity and precision that show no individual variation and have no personal charm. The problem is to decide whether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art.”

“Shrink, shrink variation, to reduce the loss.”

Loss Management Shrinks Variation

Author:W. Edwards Deming

“Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.”

Understanding Quality Keys Management Key To Success Variation

Author:W. Edwards Deming

“We must understand variation.”

Management Variation

Author:W. Edwards Deming

“One need not be eminent in any part of profound knowledge in order to understand it and to apply it. The various segments of the system of profound knowledge cannot be separated. They interact with each other. For example knowledge about psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.”

Needs Order Psychology Example Management Profound Various Variation Incomplete

Author:W. Edwards Deming

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Variation Quotes