Quotes & Sayings About Adaptation And Survival

Only those who are able to adapt to changing scenarios will continue to survive and prosper. Success is directly proportional to the degree of positive adaptation to change. — Vishwas Chavan

Adaptation is the key to survival. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Human nature was structured through the eons.
What our environment of persistent scarcity has done to us during all that time is undeniable; it has transformed a particular behavior that insures collective survival in situations of scarcity into our "default" or basic code of behavior in all situations. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

The only way in which Darwin's data made sense was to suppose that species battled for survival, and that evolution came when one slight adaptation of a species proved more successful than another in the battle: a process which he named 'natural selection'. There was nothing benevolent about the providence which watched over the process. Reason was served her notice as the handmaid of Christian revelation. — Diarmaid MacCulloch

We have one mind, and it contains both thought and feeling. Passion and reason combine as one in our mind. Only when we are at war with ourselves do they diverge, but this is pathology not a healthy state. They are both parts of the whole, each a subsystem embedded in an integrated, larger system. There is nothing more human than our reason and our emotions. We are probably the most emotional creature on the earth as a result of the complexity and subtlety of our thought, our mind's and body's role in adaptation, and our dependency on other people, all of which are relevant to survival and how we flourish as individuals and a species. — Richard S. Lazarus

The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions. — Dave Smalley

Humans are built to move. We evolved under conditions that required daily intense physical activity, and even among individuals with lower physical potential, that hard-earned genotype is still ours today. The modern sedentary lifestyle leads to the inactivation of the genes related to physical performance, attributes that were once critical for survival and which are still critical for the correct, healthy expression of the genotype. The genes are still there, they just aren't doing anything because the body is not stressed enough to cause a physiological adaptation requiring their activation. The sedentary person's heart, lungs, muscles, bones, nerves and brain all operate far below the level at which they evolved to function, and at which they still function best. — Mark Rippetoe

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival. — Cary Fowler

For here was the hole in Alma's theory: she could not, for the life of her, understand the evolutionary advantages of altruism and self-sacrifice. If the natural world was indeed the sphere of amoral and constant struggle for survival that it appeared to be, and if outcompeting one's rivals was the key to dominance, adaptation, and endurance - then what was one supposed to make, for instance, of someone like her sister Prudence? Whenever Alma mentioned her sister's name, with respect to her theory of competitive alteration, her uncle groaned. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A cockroach can't defeat a dinosaur. But the cockroach is better at one thing, and it has ensured its survival through the ages: Adaptation. One could adapt to the environment and the other one couldn't. — Georges St-Pierre

During periods of discontinuous, abrupt change, the essence of adaptation involves a keen sensitivity to what should be abandoned - not what should be changed or introduced. A willingness to depart from the familiar has distinct survival value. — Peter Drucker

Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth ... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves ... Nevertheless, ... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory ... — Michael Ruse

Without parlaying with the renunciation of the world, a person must establish a means to live in harmony with the uncertainties of a chaotic world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Without that finish line that denotes survivorship, there is not the same level of cultural awareness or acceptance of our diseases, no backdrop of success with which outsiders can judge our journey. Our survival is more subtle and nuanced; it entails adaptation and negotiation, and is as fluid as our disease progression and symptoms are. — Laurie Edwards

Maybe hope springs eternal in the whale's heart too. I don't know. If you look at the history of species there seems to be no selective advantage to intelligence. It's the microbes who have totally ignored selection for three and a half billion years that remain with us and probably will remain. They seem almost immortal. The process of evolution appears to be about specialization and adaptation and yet these are the very things that seem ultimately to mediate against survival itself. — Cormac McCarthy

Evolution taught us that adaptation is the key to survival. — Gemma Malley